Sexels
Sexels is a portmanteau of sensing pixels and is a way of describing the sensor resolution in a device. Not the resolution of a sensor but rather how many of a particular type of sensor are in a device of a given volume.
ChatGPT estimates that there are hundreds to low thousands of sensors in a typical chemical plant which is spread out over hundreds of thousands of square meters. This gives the plant a total sensing resultion of a centisexels per square meter (10^-2 sexels/sqm).
In comparison transistor density on a computer chip is 10¹⁵ transistors/sqm and 10¹⁵ cmos memory cells/sqm. Each transistor is sensing the presence or absence of a base current and cmos memory cells can detect the presence or absence of charge in their capacitor. That difference of 17 orders of magnitude (that is 100,000,000,000,000,000 times more) demonstrates that there is considerable room for improvement. (I don’t see something that is an order of magnitude of orders of magnitudes very often but this is one of those rare cases.)
Increasing the sensing resolution in chemical plants should become a design parameter to be optimised for. Unit operations like heat exchangers, pumps, reactors should have sexels resolutions on their data sheets. There should be an arms race between manufacturers to increase the number of sexels in their devices. Manufacturers for the chemical plant industry should be placed under the same market forces as camera manufacturers are to increase pixel specs for their devices.
Benefits from a higher sexel value
- Device malfunction prediction.
Unit operations are replaced after a certain duration of operating time instead of when the device actually starts showing leading signals of malfunction. Because of the enormous cost involved with a part breaking and stopping plant operations these replacement times are incredibly conservative. Sexels for vibration, temperature and pressure will be able to provide accurate malfunction predictions especially when its data is compared with data sourced from millions of other identical machines. - Higher resale value.
There is a high resolution record of the complete operating history of the device you are considering buying and you can compare it to the data from other identical machines to have a precise estimate of the service life left in the device. - Real life FEA
Finite element analysis (FEA) is a computer simulation tool that provides a high resolution prediction of device performance however the actual physical device performance is only verified using a sexel resolution many orders of magnitude less than the FEA simulation. This creates a disconnect in the research and development iteration cycle potentially leaving a lot of performance gains on the table. - Provides warnings
Higher resolution sexels can warn you if the device is operating outside of its design parameters. - Maintenance
Temperature sexels in a heat exchanger will be able to tell you where fouling is occuring and tell you the exact performance improvement from cleaning and where cleaning would be best performed. - Pin point inefficiencies
On a chemical factory scale a higher sexel resolution will be able to pin point specific unit operations that are undersized/oversized, which areas would benefit the most from an upgrade and better perform control loops. - And many other advantages.
So let the sexel arms race begin!
