Green hydrogen is essential for the industrial sector to meet sustainability goals. To drive the hydrogen ramp-up, Siemens, the technology company, will assist hydrogen industry players with software tools powered by generative artificial intelligence.
These new solutions aim to streamline the design, engineering, and automation of hydrogen production plants, enabling a faster scale-up of hydrogen production capabilities.
Faster design with Hydrogen Plant Configurator
Siemens’ new Hydrogen Plant Configurator is an intelligent chatbot based on generative artificial intelligence that empowers users to rapidly create plant designs for hydrogen production.
Through an iterative process, the configurator is fed with the desired design characteristics of a production plant, and the AI then generates seamless block flow diagrams, precise layouts of the system units and connections, as well as plant-specific key figures such as potential power consumption, heat generation, and a comprehensive list of the most important components.
This data can be directly transferred to engineering and simulation software, enabling the automatic creation of piping and instrumentation diagrams.
“Green hydrogen is crucial for the decarbonization of industry, and it will be a scarce commodity in the foreseeable future. This makes it even more important to accelerate the ramp-up of production capacities,” says Axel Lorenz, CEO Process Automation at Siemens.
“Generative artificial intelligence can provide support in the crucial phases of hydrogen production to save considerable time and costs. With the Hydrogen Plant Configurator, it is easier than ever to plan and operate a more sustainable hydrogen plant and thus lay the foundation for efficient production.”
Faster engineering with Comos AI
Siemens is introducing an AI-based tool, Comos AI, to streamline the project planning phase of hydrogen plants. The engineering assistant can generate equipment specifications and diagrams based on natural language descriptions, as well as automatically complete or correct models and drawings.
The assistant can also support cross-domain engineering or cross-product workflows by converting models, drawings, and information structures, for example, for simulation software like Siemens’ Simit. Additionally, users can leverage Comos AI to retrieve engineering-relevant information, either through their own prompts or the assistant’s suggestions.
In this way, the assistant provides answers to documentation, specifications, or technical details. By inputting images, scans, or PDFs, it can also proactively deliver relevant resources and transform them into precise diagrams and models.
AI upgrade for the distributed control system
Siemens is launching an innovative module, SFC Generation, for its Simatic PCS neo distributed control system to simplify the automation of processes in hydrogen plants.
The module, integrated into the process control system, can create sequential function charts (SFCs) using generative artificial intelligence.These SFCs provide a visual representation of process logic, allowing users to easily manage complex workflows. This is possible based on specific prompts or by copying a prose process description into the module’s chat window.
The Hydrogen Plant Configurator will be available on the Siemens Xcelerator Marketplace from the end of 2024, while Comos AI and SFC Generation are expected to be available from the beginning of 2025. Siemens will showcase these new AI tools for the first time at the Achema trade fair in Frankfurt from June 10 to 14, 2024 (Hall 11).
