(37a) KPI Controls for Major Refinery Units

Advanced Process Control (APC) solutions are recognized as a process industry best practice and proven investment opportunity in many industries, including oil refining, petrochemicals, chemicals, plastics, polymers, air separation, pulp and paper, solids and drying, building products, life sciences and several other industries.

With high energy cost and stiffer market competition, each oil refining and petrochemical company faces the ever increasing challenge of maximizing the profitability of process operations to achieve industry standard key performance indexes (KPIs), while meeting safety, operating, and product quality constraints, and minimizing the impact of process disturbances. Oil refining and petrochemical processes are dynamic operations, requiring a minute-to-minute response to changes in operating conditions. In addition, higher level enterprise planning, scheduling, and optimization systems require a predictable and repeatable response for the production operations level in order to implement business strategies. Most importantly, APC solutions can help oil refining and chemical industries to be more competitive in the global market.

This paper demonstrates that APC solutions typically offer a 2 to 6 month payback with long term sustainable benefits. This paper summaries the difficulty to identify KPIs for the major refinery units, including: - Crude / Vacuum Unit - Delayed Coker Unit - Fluidized Catalytic Cracking Unit - Hydrocracking Unit - Alkylation Unit.

It shows the control results for most of the KPIs.