Economic evaluation of advanced process control projects

This paper aims to make an economic evaluation of the results already achieved through implementation of Advanced Process Control (APC) in the pulp and paper industries. For this, we firstly describe some basic concepts, and then some cases of practical applications that have reported good outcomes are cited. Companies have invested in this technology, and there are many applications already in operation. It is worth to discuss now, after the euphoria of the initial results, what effectively are the outcomes achieved over the past years and, also, how to keep them in full control capability, promoting the appropriate maintenance actions for the effects initially achieved be improved over its use.