Refineries in the United States are also employing automatic controls in their operations. Phillips Petroleum installed a digital computer control system in its Sweeney, Texas, plant to achieve maximum efficiency in its thermal cracking process. In the first step of an experimental program, Phillips, working with Autonetics computer engineers, used a digital computer to plan optimum furnace operation. An initial 10 per cent improvement was achieved in this way, and a further 6 per cent gain resulted when a digital computer was installed on-line to operate the cracking furnace.
The Standard Oil Company of California is using an IBM 7090 in San Francisco to control its catalytic or “cat” cracking plant in El Segundo, some 450 miles away. The need for computer speed and accuracy is shown by the conditions under which the cracking plant must operate continuously with no shutdowns except for repair. Each day, two million gallons of petroleum is mixed in the cracker with the catalyst, a metallic clay. The mixing takes place at incandescent heat of 1,000° F., and the resulting inferno faces operators with more than a hundred changing factors to keep track of, a job feasible only with computer help.
Another use of computer control in the petroleum industry is that of automatic gasoline blending, as done by the Gulf Oil Corporation. A completely electronic system is in operation at Santa Fe Springs, California. The system automatically delivers the prescribed quantities of gasoline for the desired blend. In case of error or malfunction of equipment, the control alerts the human supervisor with warning lights and an audible alarm. If he does not take proper action the control system automatically shuts itself off.
From the time the war-inspired industry of synthetic rubber production began in 1940 until very recently, it has been almost entirely a manual operation. Then in 1961 Goodyear Tire & Rubber introduced computer control into the process at its Plioflex plant in Houston, Texas. Goodyear expects the new system to increase its “throughput” and also to improve the quality of the product through tighter, smoother control of the complicated operation. Other chemical processors using computer control in their plants include Dow Chemical, DuPont, Monsanto, Union Carbide, Sun Oil, and The Texas Company.
Adept at controlling the flow of material through pipes, the computer can also control the flow of electricity through wires. An example of this application is the use of digital computers in electric-utility load-control stations. A typical installation is that of the Philadelphia Electric Company in Philadelphia, the first to be installed. Serving 3-1/2 million customers, the utility relies on a Minneapolis-Honeywell computer to control automatically and continuously the big turbine generators that supply electric power for the large industrial area. The memory of the computer stores data about the generators, transmission-line losses, operating costs, and so on. Besides controlling the production of power for most economy, the computer in its spare time performs billing operations for exchange of power carried on with Pennsylvania-New Jersey-Maryland Interconnection and Delaware Power & Light Company and Atlantic City Electric Company.
Other utilities using computer control are the Riverside Power Station of the Gulf States Utilities Company, Southern California Edison, and the Louisiana Power & Light Company’s Little Gypsy station in New Orleans.
Another industry that makes use of a continuous flow of material is now being fitted for computer control, and as a result papermakers may soon have a better product to sell. IBM has delivered a 1710 computer to Potlach Forests, Inc., in Idaho for control of a paperboard machine 500 feet long. Papermaking up to now has been more art than science because of the difficulty of controlling recipes. With the computer, Potlach expects to make better paper, have less reject material, and spend less time in changing from one product run to another.
Showing that automatic control can work just about anywhere, the English firm of Cliffe Hill Granite Company in Markfield, Leicestershire, controls its grading and batching of granite aggregate from a central location. Besides rock-crushers, cement plants like Riverside Cement Company use computer control in the United States.
Thus far most of the computer control operations we have discussed are in the continuous-processing fields of chemicals or other uniform materials. The computer is making headway in the machine shop too, although its work is less likely of notice there since the control panel is less impressive than the large machine tool it is directing. Aptly called APT, for Automatically Programmed Tools, the new technique is the brainchild of M.I.T. engineer Douglas Ross. Automatic control eliminates the need for drill jigs and other special setup tools and results in cheaper, faster, and more accurate machine work.
