May 17 2016, 14.57 PM IST || Pocket News Alert
• Centre to develop power intensive applications with first focus on Digital Twin of Aluminium Smelter
• Underlines GE’s commitment to promote global collaboration in driving the digital industrial transformation
Photo Captions:
GE-IIT
Madras agreement3: (Left to Right) Prof. Krishnan Balasubramanian, Dean
of Industrial Consultancy & Sponsored Research, IIT Madras; Azeez
Mohammed, President & CEO, GE Power Services, Middle East &
Africa; Prof. Bhaskar Ramamurthi, Director of IIT Madras; Bhanu Shekhar,
Chief Digital Officer, GE Power, Middle East & Africa
Aluminium smelters are essentially refineries for extracting aluminum from aluminium oxide, separating the aluminium from oxygen through a chemical reaction. Through the new Centre, GE and IIT Madras will create a Digital Twin of a smelter. The Twin is a living digital model that will continuously generate new data and insights about the smelter that allows operators to run the smelters more efficiently. For the aluminium smelter industry, the net gains through such productivity enhancement are valued at between US$50 to 150 million annually.
The Industrial Internet Centre of Excellence marks a milestone global collaboration by GE to drive digital industrial transformation that can bring quantum leaps in productivity, efficiency and reliability to the industrial sector. Integrating heavy machinery with advanced software and analytics to create Digital Twins, the digital industrial solutions are powered by Predix, the world’s first and only cloud-based operating system built exclusively for industry.
A mere 1 percent increase in productivity through the application of Industrial Internet solutions can contribute to a 20 percent potential increase in performance for its customers.
The agreement to set up the centre was signed between Azeez Mohammed, President & CEO, GE Power Services, Middle East & Africa and Professor Bhaskar Ramamurthi, Director of IIT Madras. Researchers and students at the prestigious university will work closely with the GE Global Research, GE Power Services Engineering and GE Digital teams at GE’s John F. Welch Technology Centre in Bangalore.
Azeez Mohammed, President & CEO, GE Power Services, MEA, said: “The agreement with IIT Madras underlines our commitment to building industry-academia linkages to support digital industrial transformation. Digitisation is the future of industry, and our Industrial Internet solutions aim to enhance efficiency, reliability and productivity through proactive monitoring and diagnosis of the operational processes. The pioneering work in creating the Digital Twin of an Aluminium Smelter at the Centre, and the solutions co-created with the expertise of the IIT Madras faculty and researchers will support the industry to achieve cost savings and improved productivity. These digital solutions can be replicated at smelters across the world.”
Professor Bhaskar Ramamurthi, Director of IIT Madras, said: “This is a remarkable opportunity for our faculty and students to collaborate with GE’s global team of experts to develop path-breaking solutions for the smelter industry. GE is an ideal partner for this collaboration and its strong digital industrial capabilities will help achieve the desired results in enhancing the operational efficiency of the smelter industry. Our faculty and researchers have in-depth understanding of physics-based process modelling, and we look forward to work with multi-sectoral experts at GE from around the world to innovate new solutions. We are delighted that the solutions co-created by IIT Madras and GE will have global application.”
Munesh Makhija, VP, GE India Technology Centre & CTO, GE South Asia, said: “The research will be undertaken with the guidance of the GE Global Research team and draw on our industry insights and ongoing R&D in digital industrial applications. This presents a strong opportunity to bring innovative operational processes for the smelter industry and scale up its efficiency. We are committed to fostering industry-academia linkages, and this serves as a great opportunity to work with the experts and researchers at IIT Madras.”
GE’s dedicated teams in the Middle East will also play an active role in the collaboration, leveraging their expertise of working with some of the world’s largest aluminium smelters in the UAE and Bahrain.
IIT Madras will bring its deep expertise in Physics-based Process Modelling and the interplay between Machine Learning and Physics based models to the collaboration, while GE will leverage its global research capabilities and proven strengths in developing digital industrial applications. “IIT Madras has a large number of faculty working in the area of Data and Decision Sciences as well as in the area of manufacutring, sensors, and networks. This joint effort with GE will bring together a multidisciplinary group of faculty towards industry relevant research. The work will relate to manufacturing analytic in Aluminum smelting plants in its initial phase and will lead to more technologies in the arena of Industrial Internet of Things (IIOT),” added Prof. Krishnan Balasubramanian, Dean, Industrial Consultancy & Sponsored Research, IIT Madras.
GE will combine the data from various sensors with the Physics-based understanding of the various processes. Using Artificial Intelligence technology, the centre will create a self-tuning live model of the smelter. This Digital Twin of the smelter will serve as the foundation for various applications that contribute to enhancing the efficiency, productivity and reliability of the smelting process and the power plants.
These solutions will be developed using GE’s Predix Industrial Internet operating system and Predix APM (Asset Performance Management), which optimises machines and operations to maximise business performance through three core capabilities: Machine and Equipment Health, Reliability Management, and Maintenance Optimisation.
Globally, electricity accounts for nearly 38 percent of the cost of aluminium production. According to the International Aluminium Institute, the smelting industry consumed over 690,170 Gigawatt hours (GWh) of power for primary aluminium production in 2014, the latest available figures. During the same period, the GCC countries consumed 57,668 GWh to produce over 4.832 million tonnes of aluminium, mostly using natural gas, while Asian producers, excluding China, consumed over 16,343 GWh electricity to produce 2.429 million tonnes, with the power mostly from coal.
It is estimated that aluminium consumption will reach about 67 million tonnes by 2020, with most of the additional capacity being concentrated in the GCC, India and China. AT Kearney in its report on ‘How GCC Smelters can continue growing profitably,’ underline that integrating condition monitoring, non-destructive testing, preventive and predictive maintenance and work orders can cut maintenance cost by as much as 30 percent.
The Digital Twin of the Aluminium Smelter will enable the industry not only to optimise costs through advanced and precision preventive maintenance but also by streamlining power use efficiency. This in turn will help save on the cost of power needed for primary aluminium production.
About GE:
GE (NYSE: GE) is the world’s Digital Industrial Company, transforming industry with software-defined machines and solutions that are connected, responsive and predictive. GE is organised around a global exchange of knowledge, the "GE Store," through which each business shares and accesses the same technology, markets, structure and intellect. Each invention further fuels innovation and application across our industrial sectors. With people, services, technology and scale, GE delivers better outcomes for customers by speaking the language of industry. www.ge.com
About GE India Technology Centre:
GE has over 5300 researchers and engineers across four technology centres located in Bangalore, Hyderabad, Chennai and Mumbai. The John F. Welch Technology Centre in Bangalore is GE’s first and largest integrated multidisciplinary research and development centre. GE technologists in India have contributed to over 3200 patent applications filed by the parent General Electric Company. The team works on innovative solutions that are shaping the future of GE businesses across energy, healthcare, aviation and transportation domains. www.ge.com/jfwtc
About IIT Madras:
Indian Institute of Technology Madras is one among the foremost institutes of national importance in higher technological education, basic and applied research. IIT Madras is a residential institute with nearly 550 faculty, 8,000 students and 1,250 administrative & supporting staff and is a self-contained campus located in a beautiful wooded land of about 250 hectares. It has established itself as a premier centre for teaching, research and industrial consultancy in the country.
The Institute has 16 academic departments and a few advanced research centres in various disciplines of engineering and pure sciences, with nearly 100 laboratories organised in a unique pattern of functioning. A faculty of international repute, a brilliant student community, excellent technical & supporting staff and an effective administration - have all contributed to the pre-eminent status of IIT Madras