Innovation in the digital age is poised to help take petrochemical plant turnarounds to new levels of efficiency. In an industry traditionally cautious about adopting new technology, advanced robotics and the Internet of Things (IoT) are turning turnaround maintenance planning-as-usual on its head.
IoT sensors generate analytics that can serve as a crystal ball for the health of critical plant machinery.
CAMILLE CURRY-THEIS, Project Manager, Mahaffey Fabric Structures
According to global petrochemical research giant McKinsey, plants discard more than half the data they generate. This points to opportunities for managers to better use data to achieve higher yields and throughput, lower energy consumption and more effective maintenance. For many companies, these could be potentially easy wins that can be achieved using existing IT and process-control systems. For other companies, investing in new technology to expand the types of data they collect creates the potential to capture further gains.
Turnaround maintenance events present a strong case for the value of these gains. Lasting a few weeks or months, turnaround maintenance is typically intended to add up to five years of smooth operations to plant machinery. Turnarounds are also often a major expense due to the direct costs of maintenance and the huge loss of production during scheduled plant shutdowns necessary to accommodate the work. This places an immense responsibility on turnaround project managers to prevent cost overruns and protect the return on investment of these critical maintenance events.
Enter drones, crawlers and the IoT.
Inspection drones eliminate the need for human workers to go to dangerous locations, while analytics software identifies potential defects from data and images the drone collects. From a turnaround perspective, drone inspection is a more efficient path for maintenance teams to collect and interpret data about facilities' infrastructure and critical equipment. This means improved safety and better insights at a lower cost.
Large downstream companies are capitalizing on the potential uses of these robots and conducting inspections more frequently as a result.
In some plants, drones are used to inspect storage tanks. This eliminates both the safety risk of deploying workers for these inspections and ancillary costs (e.g., building scaffolding to give workers access).
Drones also awoke a new interest in crawlers. According to a report by the American Society of Engineers, some downstream companies deploy miniature robots with pan-tilt-zoom high-definition cameras to crawl through smaller pipes running between parts of their plants. Other types of crawlers with ultrasonic sensors are used to test tank floors.
Where robots help the inspection process, IoT sensors generate analytics that can serve as a crystal ball for the health of critical plant machinery. This predictive maintenance technology provides historical and real-time performance data, maintenance records, inspection reports and environmental data. Advanced analytics turn the massive amount of incoming maintenance and performance data into actionable insights, allowing companies to better predict equipment failures before they occur. These predictions help turnaround project managers develop a scope of work that is less likely to suffer major increases after work begins.
These advances are only just gaining a foothold, and the petrochemical sector's digital revolution is far from finished. Given the size, cost and complexity of major downstream facilities, companies are necessarily cautious of adopting new technology. As we continue to uncover all the potential digital technology holds for our industry, one t hing is certain: Advanced analytics isn't pulling any punches in proving its value as a force of continuous improvement.
For more information, call Camille Curry-Theis at (832) 459-0055 or email her at Camille@MahaffeyUSA.com.
