THE FUTURE OFPROCESS CONTROLS, INSTRUMENTATION, AUTOMATIONNew solution to improve

PROPYLENE RECOVERY YIELD

OPTIMIZING FIRED ASSETSfor increased efficiency

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Hydrocarbon Processing | NOVEMBER 2020 19

Digital K. RATCLIFFExxonMobil, Houston, Texas

Harnessing the power of digital platforms to improve plant performance and increase customer success

Digital online platforms offer signifi-cant potential benefits across the oil and gas value chain by employing advanced analytical tools and near-real-time access to technical expertise to improve day-to-day plant performance.

The need for digitalization at manu-facturing sites. According to PriceWa-terhouseCooper’s 22nd Annual Global CEO survey, 79% of industrial CEOs were concerned about their company’s digital capability before COVID-19.1 Tools that enable efficient and remote digital ways of working can benefit companies through the current pandemic crisis and be in-creasingly important in the future.2

In the column “Digitalization—Why now?,” published in the March 2019 issue of Hydrocarbon Processing, Duncan Mickl-em observes that digitalization “enables a process operation to extend its problem-solving ecosphere beyond the plant: to en-gage the support, brainpower and technol-ogies of the plant’s key partners, customers and suppliers, each of which can bring spe-cific expertise and experience to augment the plant’s own capabilities and resources.”3

Online platforms provide an oppor-tunity to bring such enhanced support to plant operators.

Online platforms transform unit monitoring. Optimizing plant perfor-mance, increasing operational efficiency and minimizing production interruptions are key goals for the oil and gas value chain. Cloud-based platforms—housed on dedicated servers—are designed to allow closer collaboration with technical experts through shared viewing access to a unit’s performance. As a result, plant op-erators benefit from secure, near-real-time data, helping them to make faster, more informed decisions that can potentially elevate their operations to the next level of overall performance and efficiency.

These online platforms are not de-signed to replace traditional monitor-ing services for refining and chemical manufacturing units, but to supplement them by automatically processing data, enabling more meaningful analysis and improving collaboration. TABLE 1 high-lights typical offline and online monitor-ing capabilities.

Delivering value for lube makers. Predictive tools allow lubricant produc-ers to quickly test the impact of feedstock and operational changes. These lube op-timization models can predict process performance and product yields and

quality based on key operating variables, such as average reactor temperature, pres-sure and separation efficiency.

Lube optimization models enable us-ers to evaluate the impact of changes in basestock viscosity to improve unit eco-nomics. Refiners can also use the model to understand the impact of changing feedstock quality on the finished base-stock properties to make appropriate op-erational decisions.

Boosting process unit performance. Users can leverage decades of a provider’s technical and operational experience through an appropriate online monitor-

TABLE 1. Typical offline and online monitoring capabilities

Scope Offline Online

Operational data reviews Quarterly, look back As needed in near real time

Data cleanup and processing

Days or weeks plus recycling discussions

Automatic

Knowledge retention No central repository Collaboration inside the platform

Optimization potential Offline modeling Online modeling

Startup support Onsite or via conference call Near-real-time data views online

Speed of operational issue identification

Often takes weeks to identify

Easier to identify early with near-real-time data

FIG. 1. View of an online unit monitoring toola dashboard.

Originally appeared in:November 2020, pgs 19-20.Used with permission.

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Digital

ing tool that can offer timely technical insights into processing unit operations. Any potential concerns can often be iden-tified earlier and resolved faster than non-digital monitoring.

Unit monitoring modules include a common data view that helps enhance collaboration between the operator and provider’s experts. Alerts can be provided when unit operations are outside specified parameters, enabling early detection of process issues and timely technical insights to help improve process performance. By detecting catalyst deactivation early, cata-lyst cycle length reduction can be avoid-ed, enabling easier troubleshooting by a provider’s technical experts. Knowledge transfer and institutionalized process ex-pertise is facilitated using a collaboration feature in the monitoring tool. Online unit monitoring—when used in collaboration with technology experts—can optimize the process to help enhance personnel ef-ficiencies and unit profitability.

FIG. 1 provides an example view of operations via an exemplary online unit monitoring toola.

Maintaining business continuity. Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, the author’s company was able to collabo-

rate with specific customers—without interruption—by using a proprietary on-line platforma. Due to the pandemic, tech-nical provider personnel were not able to attend onsite planned catalyst change-outs and subsequent plant startups to help customers proceed as planned, and instantaneous adjustments were made.

To help customers overcome some of the challenges caused by COVID-19 and maintain or increase operational safety, the author’s company was able to lever-age the remote plant startup support fea-ture of the online platform.

For example, the online platform was utilized—with application program in-terface data transfer—to remotely moni-tor plants, allowing technical support engineers to see startup conditions at a customer’s unit in near real time. While monitoring the process conditions re-motely, personnel could see if the refin-ery was approaching unfavorable operat-ing conditions and was able to alert the customer to intervene, bringing clarity to the minimum pressurization temperature requirements for the reactor vessel.

During travel/social restrictions, plant operators can leverage online plat-forms to ensure operations are managed efficiently. As described in this column’s

case study, the proprietary online plat-form enabled personnel to collaborate remotely to complete facility startup as planned, and to make quick adjustments to optimize operations.

NOTES a ExxonMobil’s InFocus™ unit monitoring tool

LITERATURE CITED 1 PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), “22nd Annual

Global CEO Survey: CEOs’ curbed confidence spells caution,” 2019, online: https://www.pwc.com/gx/en/ceo-survey/2019/report/pwc-22nd-annual-global-ceo-survey.pdf

2 Perry, D. et. al., “COVID-19 and the digital call to action for industrial companies,” L.E.K. Consulting, April 2020.

3 Micklem, D., “Digitalization—Why now?” Hydrocarbon Processing, March 2019.

KAREN RATCLIFF is a Market Development Advisor in the catalysts and licensing business unit at ExxonMobil Chemical. She is responsible for the InFocus online platform, supporting ExxonMobil licensees with optimization and

troubleshooting of their process units. Ms. Ratcliff earned a Bch degree in chemical engineering from Louisiana Tech University, an MS degree in business administration from the University of Texas, Austin, and is pursuing a doctorate at Vanderbilt.

Electronic permissions to ExxonMobile from Hydrocarbon Processing magazine / Gulf Publishing.

November © 2020 Gulf Publishing Company

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