From Hydrocarbon Processing: KBR wins FEED work to raise US refinery's capacity to handle heavy crudes

"KBR wins FEED work to raise US refinery's capacity to handle heavy crudes

During the feasibility phase, KBR’s expertise will focus on determining the optimum economic configuration to increase overall heavy crude processing capability and flexibility. The refinery currently processes light sweet crudes and aims to take advantage of fluctuations in the crude oil pricing market."

Read the full article here

And guess who KBR uses to model heavy oils in their refining designs? 

Yes, SimSci simulation software!

Shouldn't you be using it to model heavy oils as well?

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Breaking through the Heavy Oil Barrier with SimSci Software

Heavy Oils Link!

SimSci process simulation software from Invensys contains proprietary technology to model heavy oils more accurately than any other methods! Click on the link to find out more about heavy oils and what Invensys has done to meet this industry trend.

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Heavy Oils Video Series

Check out these videos on Heavy Oils

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Refinery Performance Webinar recordings now available for viewing

Invensys frequently offers live webinars to help viewers gain a better understanding of our solutions.These webinar recordings are now available for you to view on-demand.

This webinar series introduces ways to optimize performance in a refinery. The following webinars address two major issues in today’s refineries.

First, is “Reducing Material Losses with Better Yield Accounting”, which addresses the need for better yield accounting. In order to prevent major monetary loss, refineries must tighten control on their raw material, inventory, and products. Unaccounted for material loss may be due to a number of factors including inaccurate or inconsistent data, coming led ownership of processed materials, environmental (HSE) pressure to report yields and losses, or Joint Venture (JV) pressure to report transactions. Our new Yield Accounting solution has corrected these issues in order to provide refiners with an accurate means of accounting for material losses.

Next is “Aging Workforce and Operator Training – Improve your bottom line with faster, more effective training techniques”.  This webinar explains how so much of the aging workforce is nearing retirement, leaving plant operation in the hands of less experienced, undertrained operators. SimSci-Esscor offers operator training that will optimize performance and improve safety in a plant. Watch this webinar to learn more about these innovative methods that will prepare your workforce in an efficient and effective manner.

In the “Using New Modeling Technology to Help Solve Heavy Oil Processing Issues” webinar, Invensys employees explain the importance of processing heavier feedstock. Today’s refineries were originally designed for lighter crudes.  Since there is an ever-increasing demand for oil and the amount of heavy oils on Earth is greater than twice the supply of lighter crudes, refineries are being forced to utilize them.  Conventional refineries find great difficulty in processing these “molasses-like” substances.  Processing the crude incorrectly leads to operational errors, like equipment failure and process downtime, which can risk operator safety.  This webinar offers insight on how to deal with heavy oils.

“Make better feedstock business decisions in real-time with Assay Knowledge Management” explains how to use this solution to make knowledgeable and profitable decisions based on your refinery’s needs. Invensys has paired up with Spiral Software, bringing you a new technology that properly determines the properties of feedstock, allowing a refiner to evaluate all available feedstocks in real time. This leads to better decisions and improves profitability.

The final webinar on demand is “How to improve refinery profitability with real-time, online, optimization”. Plant and operations managers should take an interest in finding out about the benefits of real-time online optimization. This Invensys solution can assist you in improving performance, making better business decisions, and increasing refinery profitability. If you are already interested in real-time optimization solutions but are not sure which solution is right for your refinery’s needs, this webinar can help!

In case you missed it, you can check out the recordings of the above mentioned webinars and others here: 

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Download Whitepaper on Processing Heavy and Extra Heavy Oils

Here is a sample of the white paper:

Introduction

The world’s energy industry has followed the availability of easily attainable and economically feasible supplies for the oil segment that has moved towards heavier feedstock. The earlier extraction, accessibility, transport and processing centered around lighter crudes with characteristics that could be uniformly and reliably processed in refineries using a stable of proven technologies is no longer possible. As those lighter crude supplies have become exhausted or more difficult to obtain, demand from emerging nations such as India and China has strained the supply chain. Because of their explosive growth, these and other countries experiencing economic growth are usurping an increasing amount of the existing supply of conventional crudes while investing in supplies of heavier sources as well. Heavier crudes have unique physical properties that often present costly refining challenges. Efficient processing solutions require a thorough understanding of the crude’s characteristics and operating behavior. Those involved in heavy or extra heavy oil refining must decide what they have and how they should process it.

Download and read the full white paper here: Whitepaper on Processing Heavy and Extra Heavy Oils

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Whitepaper on Processing Heavy and Extra Heavy Oils

Free Whitepaper on Processing Heavy and Extra Heavy Oils - click here

Come get a free whitepaper on processing heavy oils. SimSci is determined to makes sure that the simulation software we provide has the technology needed for processing heavy oils!


About SimSci: SimSci simulation software has improved the work of many industries across the globe by aiding in the design, operation, and optimization of processes. SimSci provides tools for the most pressing aspects in today’s industries. Dynamic simulation tools and operator training simulators (OTS) improve safety in the workplace. Process optimization and process simulation result in improved performance and engineering software results in improved profitability.

Technical Support: As always, feel free to reach out to your local technical support team for more information.

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Guest Post: How to best you can characterize your liquid hydrocarbons

I wish to personally thank Marimuthu for being the first guest blogger outside of Invensys! 

If you wish to be a guest blogger, don't hesitate to contact me. 
How to best characterize your liquid hydrocarbons
Guest Blogger: Marimuthu Ananthavelu of CB&I

Characterizing your hydrocarbons is surely an art; the history begins with efforts taken to prepare API technical data book sometime when the energy industry started realizing the importance of hydrocarbon resources and its much needed infrastructure.


Experiments at the Pennsylvania State University, Department of chemical engineering make remarks in the field of Liquid hydrocarbons characterization involving different mathematical manipulations to match the experimental data all the time. (While I was graduating, I did not realize that mathematics was going to be such an important thing in the field of chemical engineering)

We see hundreds of research papers getting published in the field of characterization of Liquid hydrocarbons and mainly tried with heavy oils.

It is very beautiful to understand how best the liquid hydrocarbons can be characterized in PRO/II. The best we characterize, there are always best results guaranteed. This will mainly be important when we have the raw true boiling numbers found with volume % of vaporization in industrial laboratory when we don’t have updated assay database or when we have the change in feed blend.

Let’s see some important features to be considered;

1. Look clearly at the numbers;

Whether it is TBP (True Boiling Point) curve or % of sulfur content or specific gravity curve or Watson K factor; the entry of these numbers are most important. Time which you may neglect giving these inputs correctly, will fire back heavily.

Make Lighters possibly into your characterization. In case if you get to have many different types of crude, define all the lighter components individually with respective composition in each crude before you blend. When you blend, don’t expect that the blended product stream will have the same number of components as any one of the crude type which has maximum number of components. You may think this helps reducing the convergence time, but it would give you less usable outputs, for example in the column overhead off gases stream quantity or the stream goes to ejector.

Better use as many components as possible since it takes very little time.

2. Define your impurities level for each cut point

It is preferred to give the impurity range for each cut-point or with respect to % distilled. It produces the % of impurity getting landed in each product or in by-products and become the basis for downstream processing units design.

3. Look at the Characterization options;

There are many different combinations for characterization in PRO/II that serve various chemical engineering applications. Look mainly at the different methods whore the key inputs are generated mainly Normal Boiling point of the pseudo components, Molecular weight of the pseudo components, and specific gravity of the pseudo components. These are just most important parameters based upon which the individual pseudo components properties getting calculated which all make one stream. There are different ways to calculate the above properties.

4. Look at the Thermodynamic models used;

You should have plenty of literature to choose your thermodynamic model. Customize your thermo model to the specificapplication.

When you are in doubt, just regenerate the base properties which were used to define the whole components properties for example NBP (bubble point) and specific gravity. Then compare with the base properties originally used. This will give you a quick view whether the thermo model used is conveniently true or not. 

5. Always have your eye on heavy oil

It is well understood by the industry, though many mathematical combinations have been successful in representing the experimental results, it is still a universal challenge for any process simulator to predict the properties of heavy oil with great accuracy. Refer data book, public crude assay data before you conclude in defining such hydrocarbons. (Editior’s note: SimSci-Esscor has done a lot of work on heavy oils – get more information here)

6. If you are in operating industry and having still doubt in selecting the right thermodynamic model, just try matching the basic engineering design data with your selected thermo model results and then fix your thermo model. Careful consideration is preferred before fixing the same.

7. Whenever possible use Crude assay database, it becomes an easy task when you integrate your Spiral crude assay database with PRO/II. (Editior’s note: direct integration between Spiral and PRO/II is coming soon) 

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Invensys Rolls Out New Simulation and Modeling Capabilities for Heavy Oils | Open Source Magazine

Press release from when we first started implementing our heavy oils technology...

Invensys Rolls Out New Simulation and Modeling Capabilities for Heavy Oils | Open Source Magazine

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Check out some cool videos on heavy oils

Heavy Oils Website

Check out some cool videos on heavy oils by Scott Mobley here

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From HydrocarbonProcessing.com: TransCanada eyes East pipeline for Alberta crudes

TransCanada has been mulling the plan publicly for months, amid a growing glut of oil in Western Canada that has depressed prices. The plan involves converting part of an existing gas pipeline, TransCanada's Mainline network, for crude-oil service, and building about 870 miles of new pipeline.
Read whole article here

Those refineries will need to refine heavier feedstock. SimSci-Esscor software is excellent at modeling heavier feedstocks. Check it out here.

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Refinery Performance Webinar recordings now available for viewing

Invensys Operations Management frequently offers live webinars to help viewers gain a better understanding of our solutions.These webinar recordings are now available for you to view on-demand.

This webinar series introduces ways to optimize performance in a refinery. The following webinars address two major issues in today’s refineries.

First, is “Reducing Material Losses with Better Yield Accounting”, which addresses the need for better yield accounting. In order to prevent major monetary loss, refineries must tighten control on their raw material, inventory, and products. Unaccounted for material loss may be due to a number of factors including inaccurate or inconsistent data, coming led ownership of processed materials, environmental (HSE) pressure to report yields and losses, or Joint Venture (JV) pressure to report transactions. Our new Yield Accounting solution has corrected these issues in order to provide refiners with an accurate means of accounting for material losses.

Next is “Aging Workforce and Operator Training – Improve your bottom line with faster, more effective training techniques”.  This webinar explains how so much of the aging workforce is nearing retirement, leaving plant operation in the hands of less experienced, undertrained operators. SimSci-Esscor offers operator training that will optimize performance and improve safety in a plant. Watch this webinar to learn more about these innovative methods that will prepare your workforce in an efficient and effective manner.

In the “Using New Modeling Technology to Help Solve Heavy Oil Processing Issues” webinar, Invensys employees explain the importance of processing heavier feedstock. Today’s refineries were originally designed for lighter crudes.  Since there is an ever-increasing demand for oil and the amount of heavy oils on Earth is greater than twice the supply of lighter crudes, refineries are being forced to utilize them.  Conventional refineries find great difficulty in processing these “molasses-like” substances.  Processing the crude incorrectly leads to operational errors, like equipment failure and process downtime, which can risk operator safety.  This webinar offers insight on how to deal with heavy oils.

“Make better feedstock business decisions in real-time with Assay Knowledge Management” explains how to use this solution to make knowledgeable and profitable decisions based on your refinery’s needs. Invensys has paired up with Spiral Software, bringing you a new technology that properly determines the properties of feedstock, allowing a refiner to evaluate all available feedstocks in real time. This leads to better decisions and improves profitability.

The final webinar on demand is “How to improve refinery profitability with real-time, online, optimization”. Plant and operations managers should take an interest in finding out about the benefits of real-time online optimization. This Invensys solution can assist you in improving performance, making better business decisions, and increasing refinery profitability. If you are already interested in real-time optimization solutions but are not sure which solution is right for your refinery’s needs, this webinar can help!

In case you missed it, you can check out the recordings of the above mentioned webinars and others here: 

Read More

Breaking through Heavy Oil Barriers

Have you checked out our page on heavy oil processing? SimSci-Esscor is pretty advanced with heavy oils.

Download the free brochure that gives more details.

Also, there is a free white paper available. It should be up on the site this week, but if you email me directly, I will email you a copy.

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White Paper Sneak Preview: Processing Heavy and Extra Heavy Oils

Processing Heavy and Extra Heavy Oils
Problems and Solutions

Author: Joseph McMullen, Product Marketing Manager, SimSci-Esscor


1. Introduction
The world’s energy industry has followed the availability of easily attainable and economically feasible supplies for the oil segment that has moved towards heavier feedstock. The earlier extraction, accessibility, transport and processing centered around lighter crudes with characteristics that could be uniformly and reliably processed in refineries using a stable of proven technologies is no longer possible. As those lighter crude supplies have become exhausted or more difficult to obtain, demand from emerging nations such as India and China has strained the supply chain. Because of their explosive growth, these and other countries experiencing economic growth are usurping an increasing amount of the existing supply of conventional crudes while investing in supplies of heavier sources as well. Heavier crudes have unique physical properties that often present costly refining challenges. Efficient processing solutions require a thorough understanding of the crude’s characteristics and operating behavior. Those involved in heavy or extra heavy oil refining must decide what they have and how they should process it.

If you want to read the whole paper - just email me before Friday 3/15 and I will send you a copy.
After Friday, it will be available on our promotional website.

Read More

Refinery Performance Webinar recordings now available for viewing

Invensys Operations Management frequently offers live webinars to help viewers gain a better understanding of our solutions.These webinar recordings are now available for you to view on-demand.

This webinar series introduces ways to optimize performance in a refinery. The following webinars address two major issues in today’s refineries.

First, is “Reducing Material Losses with Better Yield Accounting”, which addresses the need for better yield accounting. In order to prevent major monetary loss, refineries must tighten control on their raw material, inventory, and products. Unaccounted for material loss may be due to a number of factors including inaccurate or inconsistent data, coming led ownership of processed materials, environmental (HSE) pressure to report yields and losses, or Joint Venture (JV) pressure to report transactions. Our new Yield Accounting solution has corrected these issues in order to provide refiners with an accurate means of accounting for material losses.

Next is “Aging Workforce and Operator Training – Improve your bottom line with faster, more effective training techniques”.  This webinar explains how so much of the aging workforce is nearing retirement, leaving plant operation in the hands of less experienced, undertrained operators. SimSci-Esscor offers operator training that will optimize performance and improve safety in a plant. Watch this webinar to learn more about these innovative methods that will prepare your workforce in an efficient and effective manner.

In the “Using New Modeling Technology to Help Solve Heavy Oil Processing Issues” webinar, Invensys employees explain the importance of processing heavier feedstock. Today’s refineries were originally designed for lighter crudes.  Since there is an ever-increasing demand for oil and the amount of heavy oils on Earth is greater than twice the supply of lighter crudes, refineries are being forced to utilize them.  Conventional refineries find great difficulty in processing these “molasses-like” substances.  Processing the crude incorrectly leads to operational errors, like equipment failure and process downtime, which can risk operator safety.  This webinar offers insight on how to deal with heavy oils.

“Make better feedstock business decisions in real-time with Assay Knowledge Management” explains how to use this solution to make knowledgeable and profitable decisions based on your refinery’s needs. Invensys has paired up with Spiral Software, bringing you a new technology that properly determines the properties of feedstock, allowing a refiner to evaluate all available feedstocks in real time. This leads to better decisions and improves profitability.

The final webinar on demand is “How to improve refinery profitability with real-time, online, optimization”. Plant and operations managers should take an interest in finding out about the benefits of real-time online optimization. This Invensys solution can assist you in improving performance, making better business decisions, and increasing refinery profitability. If you are already interested in real-time optimization solutions but are not sure which solution is right for your refinery’s needs, this webinar can help!

In case you missed it, you can check out the recordings of the above mentioned webinars and others here: 

Read More

Refinery Wide Optimization Videos

Check out these new videos on heavy oils: Refinery Wide Optimization Videos

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Has anyone attended our webinars? I would love to get your feedback.

Has anyone attended our webinars? I would love to get your feedback.

A few weeks ago we started our Refinery Wide Optimization Webinar series with a webinar on Training the refinery operators of the future. We followed that up with webinars on Heavy Oils and Yield Accounting.

Did you get to join the webinars? If so, what did you think of them. If not you can view the recordings here. We are repeating the webinar on training the refinery operators of the future on December 4th. Then in 2013 we are planning on continuing the series with webinars on optimization, Spiral Software, APC, and many other topics.

What did we do right during the first few webinars? What would you like us to do differently in the future?

I am open to all feedback.
If you don't want to post a comment on the blog, feel free to email me at joseph.mcmullen@invensys.com

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FREE WEBINAR 13 NOV: Reducing Material Losses with Better Yield Accounting

FREE WEBINAR 13 NOV: Reducing Material Losses with Better Yield Accounting, but you must register here
Why attend:

• Learn how a typical refinery can save $8.5M/year
• Get an overview of new technology-based solutions
• Get answers to your questions on yield accounting

Who should attend: Plant Managers, Operations Managers, Yield Accountants, Finance Managers, Engineering Managers

Refiners worldwide are under increased pricing pressure, and continually seek solutions to enhance performance and bottom-line profitability. Reducing material losses is a key area that should be targeted early on in any optimization initiative because of its tremendous potential to improve profitability. As you well know, found material assets accrue directly to your bottom line – and the results can be dramatic. Our research indicates that a typical refinery can see benefits of $8.5 million per year with a more accurate accounting of material.
In a refinery, yield accounting is a complex issue, and numerous factors can interfere with accurate accounting of material. Typical problems include:

• Time constraints on data collection and analysis
• Inaccurate measurements
• Duplicate information
• Commingled ownership of processed materials
• Environmental pressure (HSE) to report yields and losses
• Joint venture pressure to report transactions

Will you be joining us?

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Thank you for all that attended...

Thank you to all that attended our free webinar "Using New Modeling Technology to Help Solve Heavy Oil Processing Issues" We will post the recording shortly.

If you are interested in joining future webinars, check out the schedule here

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Free webinar today: Using New Modeling Technology to

Using New Modeling Technology to Help Solve Heavy Oil Processing Issues


The morning webinar is less than three hours away - I hope to see you there. Register here

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Free Webinar tomorrow! Heavy Oil Processing Issues

Using New Modeling Technology to Help Solve Heavy Oil Processing Issues

Why attend:

• Learn about recent developments for
• dealing with heavy oils
• Learn how to effectively model heavier
• feedstocks to avoid common problems
• Learn how other refineries are dealing
• with heavier feedstocks

Ample time will be made available for Q&A so you can discuss your situation with a leading expert in heavy oils.

Who should attend:

Plant Managers, Process Engineers, Engineering Managers, Process Design Engineers

Most of today’s refineries were designed to process lighter crudes. Similarly, the conventional process simulation software they use to model the process was developed using methodologies geared toward lighter crudes. However, refiners are currently being asked to process increasingly heavy feedstocks. Heavier crudes present operational issues that reduce performance and profitability, increase safety risks, and require either the design of new equipment or major changes in operating conditions to process them in a safe, profitable manner.

Learn more about the excellent speakers and register here

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