Advanced Monitoring and Prescriptive Maintenance

Empowering Data Driven Decisions

ThermAI's Hybrid Twin™ for Advanced Monitoring and Prescriptive Maintenance is a powerful operational excellence tool that supports data driven decision making in refinery operations, maintenance, production planning, profitability and environmental sustainability.

Advanced Monitoring of Heat Exchangers

ThermAI Advanced Performance Monitoring™ provides unprecedented insights into Heat Exchanger network thermo-hydraulic performance, leveraging the power of ThermAI Data Studio's™ fouling prediction capabilities:

Individual Heat Exchangers:
- Thermal performance (including fouling resistance, heat duty loss vs. clean)
- Hydraulic performance (ΔP vs ΔP clean)
- Key operating variables (e.g. shear stress, velocity, film temperature, wall temperature, Re number, etc.) vs. clean conditions
- Heat exchanger contribution to network performance
Overall Network:
- Actual furnace inlet temperature vs. clean conditions (i.e. furnace inlet temperature if all exchangers were clean)
- Predicted pressure drop increase vs. clean conditions (i.e. if all exchangers were clean)
- Assessment and detailed breakdown of economics and other KPIs
- Advanced visualization plots

Prescriptive Maintenance and Operations Improvements

Periodic cleaning is a common and often necessary strategy to maintain the performance of heat exchangers over long operation. However, deciding which heat exchanger to clean, when to clean it, and how to clean it (e.g. mechanically or chemically) is a non-obvious task which often relies past experience and simplistic performance indicators, rather than economic drivers and specific Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).

ThermAI Data Studio's™ advanced capabilities include:

Predictive Maintenance:
- Identification of the best heat exchanger to clean, and when to clean over an extended period of time
- Clean on opportunity: identify the best heat exchanger to clean today or during a short-term unplanned shutdown in order to minimize furnace duty

Prescriptive Maintenance:
- Evaluation of trade-offs between different cleaning methods (mechanical, chemical, thermal cleaning)
- Condition-based: how long a cleaning action needs to last, depending on the conditions of the asset (to minimize downtime)

Operations Improvement:
- A detailed analysis of operations and performance of the previous month
- Performance Prediction (thermal and hydraulic) for the overall network over the next few months of operations with a Base Case Scenario (current operation plan – e.g. cleaning schedule, flow splits), in particular trends towards hydraulic and thermal limits, and calculation of economics and other KPIs
- Performance Improvement (thermal and hydraulic) for the network over the next few months of operations with an number of Future Scenarios (alternative operational plans – e.g. cleaning schedule, flow splits), in particular trends towards hydraulic and thermal limits, and calculation of economics and other KPIs
- Recommended operation plan for the next months and assessment of benefits, including optimal operation of flow splits between branches

Examples of Typical Insights and Recommendations:

Examples of typical recommendations provided to refineries include:
- Clean E02 to maximize furnace inlet temperature and E08 to minimize pressure drop in the network
- Furnace duty is expected to reach its limit with current operations in two months. Cleaning E05 now will delay it by 1 month. The proposed cleaning schedule will avoid any production losses.
- Year-to-date fouling costs are approaching $1.5 MM and are expected to reach $9.0 MM by the end of the year. They can be reduced by 25% by the proposed cleaning schedule, costing $0.80MM: the estimated ROI is 190% with a payback of 4 months.
- Fouling behavior in E03 has changed significantly since last week, inorganics carryover from the de-salter is possible. Verify the operation of the de-salter.
- Pressure drop in E09 are reaching a critical level, vibration issues are possible. A chemical wash on the tube-side could help improving the issue.
- To reduce fouling rates in E01 while maintaining Residuum outlet temperature above 240°C, reduce bypass opening in E04 by 15% if running in turndown next week, change the flow split ratio from 40-60 to 50-50

Learn how HeatX can save you money and reduce your carbon footprint.

Email: info@heatxsurfaces.com
Phone: +1 (713) 589-9665
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