Long-Term Business Success

Application Knowledge

As refiners strive for further productivity improvements and a tighter commitment to (health, safety, and environment) HSE issues, they are adopting best practices. Yokogawa’s 50-year history of refining application know-how can help refineries adopt these best practices to operate efficiently under increasing challenging constraints.

Application Knowledge Map

Application knowledge Map

	Operational Efficiency

	Heavier, Sour Crude Utilization

	Refinery Offsite Solutions

	Knowledge Management

	Health, Safety and Environmental Measure

Operational Efficiency

Control Room Consolidation

1		Control Room Consolidation
		Yokogawa’s production management center solution consolidates all control rooms over the entire refinery. Facilitating production process restructuring of operation and planning functions, it enables a leaner crew to oversee the entire plant more effectively.

2		Plant-wide Integrated Control and Optimization
		Best practices in operational efficiency have led to a set of new production and operation concepts that are becoming a cornerstone for productivity and profitability. Yokogawa provides the latest in new advanced control and operation technologies, such as: - Multi-unit and onsite / offsite operation - Plant-wide optimization - Predictive optimization control by online feed quality estimation - Feedback from offsite tank quality to onsite process unit operating targets - Plant-wide energy control system for minimizing energy usage such as reducing flare and steam loss.

Tank Property Estimation

3		Tank Property Estimation
		Tank property estimation enables prompt oil transfer from an intermediate tank to blending or shipping facilities without laboratory test. It exemplifies Yokogawa application knowledge enabling continuous production through latest mechanisms of quality assurance.

4		Safer and More Stable Operation by a Lean Crew of Operators
		Leveraging extensive hands-on experience of helping refineries to run a safe and stable operation with a lean crew of operators, Yokogawa provides the following services: -Stability evaluation service using standardized indices calculated from alarm and manipulation analysis - Operating load evaluation service using standardized indices - Root cause analysis of instability problems and proposal/delivery of appropriate solutions, including control system improvements, advanced process control (APC) implementation, operator load reduction by operation environment reengineering, and knowledge-based assistance systems.

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Heavier, Sour Crude Utilization

5		Maximum Utilization
		Advanced process and blending control solutions enable refineries to maximize utilization of heavier and sour crude. Yokogawa solutions include fluid catalytic cracking (FCC) maximum residue oil blend charge control and blending ratio maximization in the fuel oil blending control.

6		Optimum Procurement
		Yokogawa helps refineries to design production information structure and environment that focuses on rapid and flexible scheduling as well as high-accuracy planning. Such improvements enable agile supply chain management and optimum procurement of heavier and sour sources.

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Refinery Offsite Solutions

Tank Inventory Monitoring

7		Tank Inventory Monitoring
		Tank inventory monitoring solution keeps track of tank operation level and batch conditions.

8		Path Selection and Monitoring
		Path selection and monitoring solution helps operators to carry out path selection faster and easier, preventing product contamination. It enables energy-efficient pump selection and prevents errors by minimizing the gap in operator skills and experience.

Blend Control

9		Blend Control
		Yokogawa provides a full analyzer integration solution that combines near infrared (NIR) analysis with blend control. Blend property control enables accurate blend ratio control, reducing quality giveaway and off-spec product by monitoring on-stream analyzers.

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Knowledge Management

10		Automation and Navigation of Knowledge Based Operation
		Knowledge-intensive operations such as plant startup/shutdown, compressor start-ups or crude switchover still require manual handling by a large number of operators, providing an opportunity for further operational efficiency improvement. The retirement of experienced operators is becoming a real and impending threat in terms of the loss of operations know-how such that operational knowledge management is becoming a critical issue in today’s refineries. Yokogawa’s knowledge based automation system leverages the knowledge of experienced operators and gives operators operational instruction online in sequence.

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Health, Safety, and Environmental Measure

11		Lower Sulfur Diesel Production
		Demand for low sulfur diesel (LSD) is increasing world-wide. Measurement of low sulfur content is a key factor for successful operation in hydro de-sulfurization process. Yokogawa offers online measurement for low sulfur using process gas chromatography.

12		Continuous Emission Monitoring
		Continuous emission monitoring system for utility boiler and heating furnace monitors CO, CO2, NOx, SO2, CH4, and O2 concentration in the flue gas by using infrared gas analyzer, helping refineries observes environmental regulation.

13		Flue Gas NOx Reduction
		Combustion control system optimizes utility boiler and heating furnace, integrating a Zirconia oxygen analyzer that measures the oxygen concentration in the flue gas. It enables to reduce various oxides (e.g. NOx, SO2) in the flue gas while improving fuel economy.

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