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Overcoming obstacles in the refinery evolution
Refineries of the future must face up to multiple challenges , including :
■ Nations and owner / operators increasingly looking to integrate refining and petrochemical facilities to extract and preserve more value for themselves .
■ The drive to make plants more sustainable through decarbonization , processing of bio feedstocks and process electrification .
■ The brownfield share of refining capacity will increase as investment in new capacity is taken out due to global decarbonization .
Digital transformation is vital
Digitalization is the essential tool ; unleashing the power of data to meet the challenges - and to be more profitable while doing so . But the range of innovations that now fall under the theme of digitalization can be bewildering .
Integrating IT and OT
An underlying enabler of industrial digitalization , the integration of IT and OT has been playing out slowly for decades . But it is now gathering massive momentum and delivering a vast array of new possibilities .
■ Delivering real-time or historized operational data into the business domain to support more effective decision-making .
■ Enabling the above in situations where multiple OT vendors might be involved , for example when a new petrochemical plant is integrated with an existing refinery .
Unifying power and process
The techno-commercial and environmental performance of any plant is most impacted by how its key processes perform and how this makes demands of the associated power systems . Until recently efforts to optimize either one of these things were done in isolation . Digitalization is removing these siloes , allowing meaningful optimization during the asset design phase and operations , enabling near real-time optimization across a range of interconnected KPIs .
The Digital Twin ’ s evolutionary journey
The evolution of the digital twin has become an essential industrial tool . Once a static , predominantly 3D and engineeringfocused set of digital asset information , the Digital Twin has now become a true behavioral representation of industrial plants and sits at the center of most digital use cases and capabilities , for example :
■ The refining workforce of the future needs a digital environment in which to build up the new , higher-value competencies required to operate the refinery of the future safely and profitably ; this is the Digital Twin .
■ The big crew change makes it increasingly difficult to deploy experience and expertise to the plant floor ; the Digital Twin is the medium through which connected workers – often thousands of miles apart – can collaborate to tap into a world of knowledge .
The Digital Twin is a necessary pillar of any attempt to optimize the overall business performance of any industrial asset . It provides the true technical or performance insight to underpin commercial decisions such as value chain optimization , for example , the crude purchasing and downstream product mix decisions a refinery operator must continually make . It remains an indispensable tool that propels industrial excellence . Its transformative capabilities , encompassing simulation , optimization and collaboration , empower organizations to embrace the technological future . As the digital twin continues to evolve , it holds the potential to transform refineries for the better . ■
For a list of the sources used in this article , please contact the editor .
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