Rethinking Petroleum Products Certification

Abstract

Facing various challenges in the everchanging refining landscape, it is essential that refiners raise their operations to new levels of performance. Advances in in-line blending (ILB) technology accuracy and reliability have encouraged refiners to take a step forward. Having ILB as a precursor, a new methodology is in concern: the so-called in-line certification (ILC) procedure. Blending processes make use of in-line measurements which, at least in principle, can be used to certificate the product, if the precision and accuracy of available in-line measurements are comparable to measurements provided by standard off-line tests. Such procedure may allow for significant reduction in refinery's tank farming and product inventory, increase of process flexibility, and reliability with benefits to company image. The main limitations for real-world ILC applications in the oil industry remain at the legal and technological levels. This paper proposes novel concepts and foundations of a basic in-line certification model for petroleum products regarding current interdisciplinary challenges and promising solutions.

Refinery production scheduling toward Industry 4.0

“…In contrast to the reductionist, exact discrete manufacturing industry (e.g., automobile industry), the chemical process industry in general, and oil refineries in particular, may represent a conspicuous environment for exploiting the emergent behavior (Ottino, 2011) of the manufacturing process. For example, in-line blending operations -which are also the basis for cuttingedge production technologies such as in-line blending certification (Feital et al, 2013) -represent a didactic example, since blending has been considered the refinery's last chance to impact profitability (Kelly and Mann, 2003). Increasing attention has been devoted to analyzing the main opportunities and challenges in the field (Li, 2016;Li et al, 2016), which include the urgent need for an industryuniversity research coalition (Yuan et al, 2017).…”

Lessons learned from developing and implementing refinery production scheduling technologies

“…Once a solution for the scheduling problem is determined, it should then be efficiently and reliably implemented by online applications devoted to supporting the refinery operation. These applications include advanced process controllers (APCs) (Pinotti et al, 2008) and real-time optimizers (RTO) (Liporace et al, 2009), as well as several specialized applications, such as in-line blending (ILB) and in-line certification (Feital et al, 2013). In other words, system integration is crucial in any successful RPS application.…”

“…Right after the successful launch of operations research (OR) in the inventive military arena of World War II, the oil industry inaugurated the industrial use of OR techniques (Symonds, 1955) and since then has played a forerunner role in driving the OR-based industrial automation agenda forward (Table 1) (e.g., Bonner and Moore, 1979;Cutler and Ramaker, 1979;Lee et al, 1996;Steinschorn and Hofferl, 1997;Magalhães et al, 1998;Pinto et al, 2000;Moro, 2003;Magalhães, 2004;Liporace et al, 2009;Feital et al, 2013;Mendoza et al, 2013).…”

Use of variance spectra for in‐line validation of process measurements in continuous processes

“…The existence of redundant analyzers constitutes a key point for most industrial processes, usually involving legal and economic issues . However, simple replication of measurements with the help of similar analyzers does not necessarily lead to improvement of accuracy or safety, although it always leads to improvement of measurement precision, considering that the analytical method is not perfect, but that the different analyzers can provide consistent measurement values.…”

“…However, the urge for higher productivity and improved product quality standards poses serious concerns regarding the time‐consuming and old‐fashioned laboratory practices. At first glance, this statement may seem exaggerated and unconsidered to the well‐known standard practices, but works in progress in different industrial areas clearly illustrate a trend towards the development and implementation of new in‐line process monitoring techniques. For example, in the oil and gas industry the implementation of in‐line certification procedures constitutes a brand‐new challenge that relies heavily on development and implementation of measurement validation techniques.…”