Advanced analytics-driven Energy Dashboard carves a pathway for sustainable manufacturing

The Oil and Gas industry has found itself at a crossroads since the turn of the decade. While the demand for oil and gas has stayed relatively high for the past couple of years, the fact remains that these are non-renewable resources.

Sustainability initiatives are measured on social, economic and environmental metrics, and are not necessarily dissociated from profitability. Enterprises that incorporate sustainability into their underlying philosophy and everyday operations are likely to stay profitable in the long run. Although sustainability is often considered to be analogous to investment in renewable energy in the energy industry, it also impacts business operations. As such, businesses that embrace a more rounded approach manage to reduce costs while raising equipment availability, decreasing energy consumption, minimising releases and accidents, increasing employee training and enjoying many other benefits.

A Downstream complex with around 50 interdependent chemical plants during implementation of Digitalisation 4.0 was aiming to optimise energy across the complex and opted for I-SSPDE’s Energy Optimisation Dashboard Module.

Digitalisation of Energy Balance

The Energy Optimisation Dashboard Module aims at effective use of digital technologies to convert data to Augmented Intelligence. This facilitates achieving sustainability while simultaneously improving profitability, in existing manufacturing units, by using the best available tools and technology to enhance human intelligence and allow creation of actionable intelligence.

This digital solution provides decision makers with the information required to form intelligent solutions, operational and/or design changes, in which they can dramatically reduce the use of energy and lower their carbon footprint.

The dashboard provides:

• An Operational Outlook – which interprets large amounts of data, and provides continuous real time actionable information to operators in a single, clear visual.
• An Analytical Outlook – which allows for further investigation into the data received through KPIs, enables users to investigate any anomalies in the data and uncover its root cause.
• A Strategic Outlook – which allows users to receive simulated solutions for any problems that the system identifies, thus highlighting any opportunity to optimise.

Methodology and Approach

The complex employs ‘PI’ (Process Information), a real-time data historian application to record, analyse, and monitor process information.

The Digital Dashboard customises and develops using Java/HTML based solutions, with its database and script using MySQL and PHP respectively

The dashboard summarises the interdependent utility usage across the complex and presents the information using amCharts Library.

Scope

The dashboard covers the 50 interconnected units consisting of Utilities, Ethylene Crackers, Pygas, Polymers, Aromatics, Cyclohexane and Hexene. These units are divided among three subsidiaries. The energy consumption is in the form of Fuel Gas, Steam and Electrical Power.

The energy consumption for individual units and subsidiaries is summarised. Daily, Weekly, Monthly, Yearly average and cumulative values are made available in the dashboard.

The Process Engineer can focus on a unit or subsidiary and select the time period to analyse. A bird’s-eye view is also available for C-level executives/top management to gauge the energy consumption across the complex.

The Process Engineer can evaluate the performance of units/subsidiary/complex as a whole in terms of energy intensity. Faulty tags can be highlighted by the solution and manually corrected by the user to avoid skewed data and fuzzy outputs. Energy targets can be modified as needed.

Energy Dashboard snapshots

Example

• Steam Balance across the complex covers the interdependence of the three subsidiaries.
• While the dashboard provides an overall summary of the steam consumption, production, export & import of the subsidiaries, current and historical data for the individual units is also made available.
• The Dashboard then highlights possible optimisation opportunities of steam distribution during steady state operation and individual unit shutdowns.
• Minimise letdown and maximise energy utilisation.

Ingenero strives to be the world’s leading process analytics and technical consulting company. Ingenero delivers engineering expertise and digital transformation solutions that enable increased production, sustainability, efficiency, safety and reliability. Ingenero makes its oil and gas, refining, mid-stream gas processing, petrochemical and specialty chemical industries clients safer, more effective, and sustainable through its engineering and technology services and solutions.

For more information, visit their website.