Refinery operating efficiency: improvement of oil refineries

Posted on Jan 17, 2023 at 10:01 PM

Improving oil refineries to meet market and regulatory requirements faces many challenges in today's oil industry, with low-profit margins, rising demand, high competition, and more stringent environmental requirements than ever before.

Oil refinery companies rely on approaches to improve to maintain their sustainability and survival as strong competitors in the vast market. In our next article, we provide an overview of everything about improving the oil refinery and the future of this strategy.

What is the improvement for oil refineries?

In short, improvement is a quick and timely technical process in the near term for transforming the refinery's workflow to maximise profit by making some simple adjustments to the production process to get a significant difference in the result, thereby ensuring successful Oil and Gas Investment.

In other words, how to make the most of existing assets processed within the refinery to achieve significant profit rates as the world's fuel prices rise continuously can also be improved in the long term by investing in new equipment and assets.

The real-time process management process has two different approaches depending on the method used for improvement, namely:

• Top-down downward approach:

This approach is based on the principle of hierarchical improvement. The problem of progress is addressed as a combination of different issues in terms of sizes and degrees of time. The problem begins with medium-term planning for the refinery as a whole. It extends from one month to several months, after which the period is divided into more precise periods to reach a schedule of operations daily.

• Bottom-Up Approach:

This depends on gathering local problems and trying to solve them at the refinery level.

The improvement process focuses on some other key decisions that may play a significant role in the process:

• Selection of raw materials:

This point includes all decisions related to the quality of the crude petroleum to be purchased, the sequence of operations and combinations to be operated in, and the intermediaries selected to complete the sale and purchase process.

• List of products:

Refers to all decisions regarding the type of refined products to be made, the quantities to be manufactured, the qualities to be made for each finished product, and the methods of final derivatives for sale (wholesale or retail, for consumers with brands or not).

• Operating Schedule:

This tabulation includes all decisions relating to the daily operation of the refinery, such as usage rates, cutting points, unit intensity, and unit conditions.

• Blend Product:

Includes detailing specific blending recipes for individual batches of products using various intermediate mix stock available.

• Scheduling logistics:

This tabulation includes all decisions associated with the timing and locations of the supply of shipments of raw materials (shipped by ships, pipes, trucks, etc.), as well as the time and method of transport of cargo issued from the finished products.

What tools are used to improve oil refineries?

The process of improvement and planning works according to a set of complex tools in making operational decisions and preparing and formulating the work plan; here are some of them:

• Linear Model:

It is a tool used to reach a margin that increases the raw material margin and final list of refinery products based on market requirements and operational challenges to the refinery's functioning at a given time.

• Scheduling Form:

This tool relies on translating high-level plans prepared by the linear model into detailed, actionable daily instructions in the refinery. This simulation model is far superior to the linear model but needs to improve.

• Blending Model:

It is a custom linear model focused mainly on improving the blending of finished products in consecutive batches using available inventory for blending and seeking to maximise the total value of the final product list.

• Logistics Scheduling Models:

A number of these models are usually available, used to track the delivery process of raw materials and other raw materials required by the operation process, as well as the external movement of the products.

• Raw Cutting Tool:

This tool supports the creation of raw material inspection information needed by the linear model and scheduling models for operation. This model is based on a general laboratory test and then translates into a format and cutting scheme commensurate with the refinery's processes, linear model formats, and scheduling.

• Processing Module Models:

They are detailed modules specific to each refinery's processing units that assess overall unit performance results in different operating conditions and usage rates. They also help to create the return linkages used to represent each unit in the refinery within linear and scheduling models.

What are the challenges in improving oil refineries?

The biggest challenge in improving oil refineries is that they are manual processes that depend primarily on the human factor, where a selection of highly experienced workers, technicians, and engineers make adjustments to access appropriate improvement technology.

As a result of the demographic transition, it will lose those qualified workers who have become very rare to lose the knowledge and experience associated with them.

Other challenges facing today's refinery improvement include the following:

• The use of often linear models with limited validity range ends with time.
• Maintaining practical models for simulation, production schemes, and scheduling production takes a lot of time and requires significant expertise.
• The data reconciliation process is highly indicative and streamlined.
• Collecting and managing data from tanks and silos is somewhat tricky.
• The main constraints of the improvement process have yet to be identified or addressed.
• Not keeping pace with the continuous updating of advanced control strategies and real-time improvement with momentary changes in production plans and schedules.
• Organisers' focus is on finding practical solutions within a limited time to reduce, deviate from or improve the timeline of changes in the production plan.
• Limited integration between different applications.

What is the future of improvement for oil refineries?

Future models and improvement approaches are expected to introduce more sophisticated technologies based on artificial intelligence, machine learning, and cognitive computing systems. Thus, achieving improved gradual process changes based on instantaneous changes in live data read in each split-second.

Advanced techniques introduced to improve refineries are helpful in many other things, such as:

• Automated and intelligent operations.
• Automated data management and application integration.
• Deploy the cloud to facilitate collaboration, scalability, rapid development, and provide improvements.
• Opportunities for optimisation automatically emerge.
• Automated reverse broadcasting to bridge the gap between the operating plan and timelines, actual and optimal.
• Permanently update mechanical models to create a digital self-learning twin system.
• Automation and improvement of production schedules.
• Multi-unit dynamic improvement.

If you want to dig deeper into improvements, you can take an advanced course in Refinery Process Yields Optimisation offered by the London Premier Training Centre.