Hydrocarbon Processing - September 2021 - 38

Refining Technology
dure may need to be leveraged. Projects associated with closing
the identified gaps should undergo an independent project review
or a cold eye review. This step ensures that business partners
have trust in the new system, and accept the opportunity
values calculated by the tool. Trust is a key factor that can drive
actions based on the tool's recommendations.
Operationalize. The focus in this final step is to embed the use
of the tool on a routine basis. This will enable long-term success
in extracting the most value out of the tool. This includes aligning
roles and responsibilities among various departments and
assigning appropriate work-process modifications to streamline
the use of the tool. Integrating the tool into existing equipment
monitoring work processes and energy stewardship practices
will enhance the performance of the corporate-wide initiative.
Depending on the corporation's governance structure, other integration
opportunities must be identified to leverage them in
enhancing the performance of the corporate fleet.
Data architecture. For successful digitalization, seamless data
flow and connectivity are essential, especially where billions of
data points are involved. This includes corporate level IT infrastructure
to collect and store the information in central historians
and establishing connectivity to provide secure access to
the data for the entire organization. Information such as process
measurements from each process unit gets historized in the data
historian system. Data is accessed by the fleet tool through custom
communication channels. It is important to have a powerful
calculation engine that can process such information at scheduled
periodic intervals, generating results and historizing to the
data historian or a local database (FIG. 8). Such a database enables
easy linkage with visualization software or even a web portal, creating
a graphical user interface that is easy to access and use.
Applications. The authors' company widely employs the fleet
monitoring tool for a variety of energy fleets, including furnaces,
boilers, gas turbines, waste heat recovery steam generators, steam
systems and heat exchangers. Thousands of energy consuming
and producing equipment are monitored daily, benefitting the
corporation. The prime advantage of such a tool for the authors'
company is to drive transparency and impel action to steadily improve
energy efficiency. For example, with the furnace fleet tool
rollout, the authors' company has realized improved operational
and maintenance discipline at sites.
The tool has identified maintenance opportunities, such as
FIG. 6. Example dashboard.
FIG. 7. Opportunity identification.
FIG. 8. Data architecture.
FIG. 9. Tool enables justification of air preheat replacement.
38 SEPTEMBER 2021 | HydrocarbonProcessing.com
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Hydrocarbon Processing - September 2021

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