Paper Production Digital Twin for Material-Level CO2 Tracking
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Solution Overview
Problem
The paper and pulp industry faces challenges in accurately measuring and optimizing energy consumption and CO2 emissions due to the lack of online monitoring of material attributes and process values, leading to inefficiencies and high environmental footprints.
Innovation Solution
A digital twin system is implemented to model the material flow, using virtual material representors to track and optimize energy and CO2 consumption by discretizing and merging material portions, supported by soft-sensors and functional mock-up units, enabling precise monitoring and optimization of the production process.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Measurement precision
If expensive sensors/devices are used to track material attributes for optimizing CO2 emission and energy consumption, then measurement precision is improved, but device complexity and cost increase
Solution Approach 1:
The patent creates a digital twin (virtual copy) of the continuous material flow, representing it as discrete material portions with associated attributes. This virtual model allows tracking and analysis of energy consumption and CO2 emissions without requiring expensive physical sensors throughout the process, resolving the contradiction by using information copying rather than physical measurement devices
Solution Approach 2:
The patent introduces a digital twin as an intermediary between the physical material flow and the measurement/analysis system. This intermediary virtual model enables indirect tracking of material attributes and environmental impacts, avoiding the need for direct expensive sensor measurements while maintaining measurement precision through virtual modeling
2Measurement precision
If online monitoring of material attributes is implemented, then measurement precision is improved, but device complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The system creates a digital twin that copies the material flow information in virtual form, enabling online monitoring of material attributes without complex physical sensing infrastructure. The virtual material portions and their attributes provide continuous monitoring capability through information replication rather than physical measurement
3Measurement precision
If the material is virtually discretized into material portions with representors, then measurement precision is improved, but device complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments the continuous material flow into discrete virtual material portions, each with its own representor and attributes. This segmentation enables precise tracking of energy consumption and CO2 emissions at the portion level, improving measurement precision while using software-based virtual modeling rather than complex physical measurement devices
Data Source
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AI summary
A method (200) and a system of producing a paper product by processing a continuously flowing material is described. The method incudes virtually discretizing the material into a plurality of material portions (110); generating material portion representors (120) associated with the material portions, wherein generating the material portion representors (120) includes generating respective attributes (124) of each of the material portion representors (120); for at least some of the process steps of the process, modifying the material portion representors by a respective virtual process step function (130-132; 135). The method further includes a splitting process stage including splitting a portion of a downstream material portion representor (122) into a split resource material portion representor (123) and a remaining material portion representor (124). The method further incudes a merging process stage including merging with an upstream material portion representor (121) a mergeable resource material portion representor (127).