Refining | 1 Day of Lost Revenue can cost $2,000,000

Unplanned process shutdowns can cost a refinery in excess of seven figures per day USD. As disturbances in your process happen, it’s important that you not only stay inside process limits, but stabilize your operation as quickly as possible. CCC’s advanced algorithms have been refined through years of application-specific experience. These algorithms help you to minimize process upsets and quickly return your operation back to normal in a safe and controlled manner.

Challenges:

The overall success of a refinery is often determined by a system’s availability and reliability.  A shutdown could be caused by a wet gas compressor or main air blower trip on a fluidized catalytic cracker unit.  Machine trip of additional equipment, such as the hydrogen recycle compressor for the catalytic reformer, could also lead to large productions losses.

The wet gas compressor can be one of the most challenging machine control applications in a refinery.  This is due to the significant changes in inlet gas composition coupled with the importance of precise pressure control.

Environmental regulations add to the challenges with stringent requirements on flaring.

Solution:

Minimize Process Trips – CCC advanced control solutions are designed specifically for FCCU optimization.  Process stability can be significantly improved by integrating the following controls:

• regenerator airflow control
• wet gas compressor throughput
• fractionator/regenerator differential pressure control

More robust differential pressure control reduces the likelihood of catalyst flow reversals and costly catalyst releases.

Increase production – Precise pressure control in the fractionator overhead receiver keeps your wet gas compressor between vacuum and flare setpoints.  Reducing overhead receiver pressure will lower regenerator pressure and provide increased mass flow, thereby increasing catalyst regeneration.  This additional regeneration allows for increased production.

Flare-less Start-ups – CCC antisurge and performance algorithms provide a higher level of start-up automation to eliminate wet gas flaring.

CCC controls a wide variety of refinery applications for the following units:

• Fluid Catalytic Cracking Unit:
  • Power Recovery Train
    • Expander
    • Air Blower
    • Motor-Generator
    • Steam Turbine
  • Wet Gas Compressor
• Residual Catalytic Cracking Unit
• Delayed Coker
• Reformer Units
• Alkylation Units
• Lube Oil Units
• Instrument Air Systems

Results:

Preventing one day of unplanned shutdown can save you $2M in lost revenue.  Automated start-up can bring your FCCU online up to 12 hours faster while eliminating wet gas flaring altogether.

Benefits include:

• Reduce plant shutdowns
• Improve plant efficiency
• Minimize risk of costly environmental fines
• Limit wasted energy due to recycle
• Minimize flaring
• Decrease start-up time
• Reduce noise and light pollution