Intelligent Information Management. Ken Johnson

Transcription

1 Intelligent Information Management Ken Johnson

2 All Refineries have a Movement Management system of one sort or another. This could be in the form of a logbook, a spreadsheet, an Access database or an automated system from the DCS vendors. Recent Refinery assessments have identified Excel Hell as the driving factor in day to day business in these plants. Excel applications are used extensively to drive critical business decisions. Typically we find over 10,000 spreadsheets when searching the swap drives in plants. This is problematic in that using a combination of Excel spreadsheets integrated to a real time database does not allow for real time relational information and truly integrated business processes and Excel allows anyone to do anything leaving the veracity of information highly suspect. 2 When a Refinery Manager asks the question, how can IT applications make me more money? The only answer cannot be that we will bring the information together in a way that will make your organization more efficient. This answer will prompt him to look toward a reduced head count. Most believe this is not the correct or needed response. The more accurate question is, show me the money! This paper will discuss how refiners can optimize their information management by: changing their business processes and adding additional applications; while not putting any additional data collection or management burden on operations. Is the Tank Farm Area Important? Some people consider the Oil Movements area to be the step child in the Refinery. Because of the technological elements of the Process Units, they usually get the most attention. Even though the Process Units are an important element of the business, movements run the business; the product which goes in and out of the tank farm determines the bottom line. All the custody transfers take place here and are ultimately what the Companies financials are based on. Existing Situation Since this is such an important element in the business, let s look at the tools the operators have at their disposal. Most tanks have automated tank gauging systems. These systems often have software which helps manage the stops when loading or unloading a tank. The recording of movements in the tank farm are done by using a manual log, Excel spreadsheet or possibly some other software. What Business Processes are the Tank Farm is Worried About? As mentioned above, this is a classic situation when Excel applications can be everywhere. The business processes that the off sites Personnel are worried about include: General Movement Management which records the source/ destination and the start and end time of the movements. These movements can be Unit Feed Movements, Unit Product Movements, internal Tank Farm movements as well as custody transfer movements. Who needs this information? One of the key operating parameters for Process Unit operators is to understand what tanks are feeding their units and where their products are going. In many cases, calling the tank farm answers this question.

3 3 Oil Accountants need this information. Movement information along with the custody transfer information is the base source of information for managing Oil Accounts. The Tank Farm operators need to manage this information not for the Yield Accountants but because they have a number of sub-business processes going on. They include: o A reconciliation of tank levels against ship figures from off loading or loading of ships. o A continuous monitoring of tank levels to detect and report leakage. o Recording and comparing actual manual gauges against the automatic tank gauging system and the creation of work orders on noted differences. o Continuous reconciliations of tank levels that are in running gauge again to detect leakage and generated work orders for instruments that appear out of calibration. o Recording information needed for statutory Governmental reporting especially in regard to high level tank alarm verification. o In the case of Splash blending, the management of all movements required to make a blend. What information is missing and where are the hard benefits? All of the above mentioned issues relate to streamlining the way people perform their day to day activities. Streamlining requires the operators to record the source, destination, start time and end time data. Operators now have access to automatically generated information, along with automatic alerts in the case of potential tank leakage. Therefore we are addressing a way to make everyone more efficient. With the exception of detecting potential oil leaks from tanks which would be almost like an insurance policy, we are still asking the question, Show me the money? Saving money can happen in two areas which both depend on managing the movements. The first area is in Crude Composition Tracking and the second is in Line Pack Management which directly relates to Line Flushing. In the case of Crude Composition Management, operators are constantly trying to decide where they should set up a Crude/Vacuum Unit when there is a Crude change, especially when a previous run was a specific crude type. Managing the Movements correctly will allow operators to know the actual crude compositions at any time. Some may say that the crude compositions can be determined from the Scheduling system; however, the Scheduling tool is performing a prediction not capturing the actual movements. Therefore with the knowledge of crude types in specific runs, we can relate the operating data associated with a specific crude run to show how the units performed during this previous time period. Line flushing is another area where hard benefits are applied. Line Flushing occurs to ensure that no contamination occurs during product shipments. Lines are flushed down the docks and then crude is sent back to the tanks for reprocessing. Any barrel that has to be reprocessed will cost the Refinery around $10/BBL assuming the Crude Units are full which is almost certain in today s environment. In some cases, off site personnel go on the assumption that they remember what was in a line segment and then try to make product blend, unfortunately in many cases Refiners quickly find out that they contaminate finished product blends causing downgrading.

4 4 When off site personnel know exactly what is in the lines at any given time it potentially results in hard benefit savings of up to of $4.0M/yr. The basic information needed to perform this task is Movement Management along with the physical layout and line pack quantities in the tank farm. By adding one more element to their data gathering duties, the operators can automatically generate all of this information. How do we do this? The appropriate technology should have the following characteristics. The highly structured database should have a web based front end A configurable database to define the required Refinery layout A system that employs middleware to easily access other legacy systems How does the Business Process work? The first step in the process is to automate Movements management. This is a Pumpers Log. There are a number of ways to manage the Pumpers Log depending on specific client requirements. It is important to remember that even though it is good to standardize the business processes, considering local issues is a must. Below you will find two different Pumpers Logs created for two different clients representing their different needs. The interesting point however is that the database that is driving both front ends is exactly the same database design. We are now getting closer to the heart of show me the money. Figure 1 - Pumpers Log

5 5 Features of this Pumpers Log: An Excel look and feel, Planning movements directly in the application so they could minimize the use of a manual log book, Color code both the Completed and Planned movements, All completed movements roll off the screen at midnight, Blend Instructions integrated with Pumpers Log, Movements grouped by Movement Type, Figure 2 - Pumpers Log B Features of this Pumpers Log: The ability to show Completed Movements by selecting a box above Ability to suppress Process Data viewing to maximize speed Can specify a List that will filter what movements will be displayed Movements are grouped by movement type Now that the business process of capturing movements has been streamlined, the question is, what information can be deduced from this and how does it make me money. Tank Balancing The first area we will look at is performing individual tank balances as well as the overall tank farm balance. Individual tank farm balances are important because they enable a number of groups in the Refinery to perform their jobs more efficiently. Some of the areas of opportunity include: - Operations, maintenance and yield accounting use information from the individual tank level reconciliation against unit rundown meters. - Since Oil Accounting boundaries are typically the tank farm, this entire tank farm balance would is used by the Oil Accountants.

6 - Tank oil leakage is a major concern within the Refinery; the current business process would capture a two hour reading and then convert it to a one day reading. This business process automatically detects leakage and alerts the operators. 6 Figure 3 - Tank Balancing Statutory Governmental Reporting At the moment, most plants need to show that that they are either checking the tanks on a routine basis by hand dipping the tanks and comparing these dips against the automatic tank gauging system or they need to show that they are checking limit switches to ensure tank or sumps will not be overfilled. The following shows how anyone could view this information to show the State, generate a report for the State or for day to day operation to ensure that things are routinely checked. This application automatically generates work schedules for the operators as well. Figure 4 - Limit Switch Verification

7 7 Figure 5 - Hand Dip/Automatic Tank Gauge Comparison Historical Review of Movements Even though the Movement entry screen is in some cases used to look at history, most users want a much wider variety of choices to review the movements that have occurred. A historical view of the movement screen could like the following which would enable anyone to look at and total all the Line Flushing or Slopping that has occurred over a period of time as well as many other choices. Figure 6 Movement Detail Report

8 Line Quality Management So far we have shown several areas where the operators of the tank farm and others in the Refinery can make themselves more efficient, but in most cases, this by itself does not justify a project. Hard benefits are usually required to justify a project and this can be normally found in this area. At the moment, most Refineries do not have a good way of tracking the materials in the individual segments of the lines. This knowledge is very important especially when moving materials around the tank farm or loading ships for product shipments. Because this information is presently unavailable, to ensure there is no contamination of the tanks or ships, many Refiners line flush the entire line and send it back to a Crude tank for reprocessing. Since this material has already been processed once, by putting it back into the Crude tanks will require we run it again which will take the place of processing crude. Assume that this happens to the tune of 400,000 BBL/yr. If your Crude Unit is full, which in today s environment it should be, this would back out crude at let s say $10/BBL, and this has a cost $4,000,000/yr. of lost opportunity. In another case, the operators try to remember what is in the lines and make an educated guess on what to transfer. This will often lead to the contamination of tanks and downgrading will occur. Typical costs for downgrading run between $1,000,000 - $2,000,000/yr. We have now shown you the money! 8 One of the interesting elements to this application is that the only other piece of information we are asking for the operators to record is the lineup that they are using which shows up in a pull down list. We have given a lot more information to everyone with minimum additional information required. The qualities now calculated in the lines can be used as part of the blend to ensure that line flushing can be minimized and to ensure that product blending is performed properly. The information related to all of the tanks as well as the lines in the tank farm are shown below. Figure 7 Tank/Line Inventory and Qualities Crude Composition Tracking Crude Composition tracking has been around for awhile as everyone needs to know what crudes they are either going to run or have run. From a scheduling perspective, the knowledge of what is in each crude tank is important, so you can predict the Refinery schedule. However, some think that the Refinery scheduling tool has this information, when in fact it does not because slopping and line flushing are taking place in the tank farm typically without the knowledge of the schedulers tool. Therefore we would suggest

9 that the results of the actual movements and resulting tank compositions should be the basis of initializing the scheduler s tool. 9 Additionally, in many cases where operators are trying to determine how to set up a unit based on previous crude run, this application will help solve this problem as it relates the previous occurrence to the real time data. Figure 8 Crude Composition Report Integrated Blend Scheduling The business process of blend scheduling can be very time consuming and inefficient. Normally we see this business process utilize tools such as Word, Excel to communicate things electronically and then extensively use the phone and radio. Many off site operators would like to see a more structured process so they could manage their part of the business more efficiently. This application allows the blend schedulers to create their own schedules, and activate them which then enables the offsite operators to carryout the actions required to make the blend. This application ties in seamlessly with the Pumpers Log application to allow this whole business process to be more efficient.

10 10 Figure 9 Blend Instructions Conclusion Whether we like or not the buck start or stops in the tank farm. We should consider the tank farm as important as the processing areas. If we gather information from the source we can automate many actions to make the whole business process more efficient. Additionally, there are many business opportunities related to the tank farm and with the correct tools and business processes we can realize significant savings. Taking the approach of working with a highly structured out of the box database with a powerful Web front end will allow us to minimize project costs and achieve savings quickly. Finally, we cannot put any more burden on the off site operators, but if we work with them to make their jobs more efficient and help to capture the important information, we will uncover much of the untapped hidden value in the Oil Movements process. Copyright 2005 Matrikon, Inc. All rights reserved. The information contained in this document is proprietary to Matrikon, Inc. No part of this document may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, translated, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission from Matrikon, Inc.