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实例探究 > Petrochemical Plant Troubleshoots with Aspen Plus and Saves $2.4M USD per Year

Petrochemical Plant Troubleshoots with Aspen Plus and Saves $2.4M USD per Year

技术

分析与建模 - 过程分析
应用基础设施与中间件 - 数据交换与集成

适用行业

化学品
石油和天然气

适用功能

流程制造

用例

预测性维护
过程控制与优化

服务

软件设计与工程服务

挑战

Reliance Industries Limited, an Indian conglomerate holding company, faced a challenge with their toluene separation process. The existing benzene separation column was underperforming, with the benzene content in the bottoms being higher than the required 200 ppm. This resulted in an unsuccessful planned revamp for benzene-toluene separation. The vendor was unable to offer a viable solution to the underperforming column, stating the column was too tightly designed resulting in offsite processing of the benzene column bottoms containing toluene and heavies. Following the shutdown of the offsite processing facility, the revamp for benzene-toluene became essential. Because of heavy losses due to the lack of a local toluene separation facility, an urgent revamp became critical.

关于客户

Reliance Industries Limited is an Indian conglomerate holding company. The company's businesses span across various sectors including hydrocarbon exploration and production, petroleum refining and marketing, petrochemicals, retail, and telecommunications. They strive to maintain innovation-led growth in each of these areas and aim to achieve global leadership by maintaining their position as the largest polyester yarn and fiber producer in the world and a leading producer of ultra-clean fuels. Reliance Industries uses the aspenONE Engineering suite of products in many of their businesses when designing new plants, revamping existing plants, and troubleshooting underperforming units.

解决方案

Reliance turned to Aspen Plus and the hydraulic modeling capabilities to troubleshoot the underperforming column and find a viable alternative. This was completed in-house, avoiding the costs and delay associated with getting help from an outside simulation expert. Using Aspen Plus and plant data, Reliance built a model rigorous enough to correctly explain what was occurring in the underperforming unit. They determined that poor benzene-toluene separation tower efficiency was the reason and found the benzene column to be hydraulically limited. Since the separation column required more trays to reach the required performance, a redundant column was identified as a potential alternative to avoid column replacement or re-traying, which would result in further losses in production. By confirming that the redundant column could be used as a stripper and reconfiguring the two columns, Reliance could effectively reach the required separation and locally separate the toluene.

运营影响

Implemented the final proposed design successfully with minimal capital investment
Enabled better control of product quality with new column configuration that matches Aspen Plus software’s predicted performance
Completed in-house, avoiding the costs and delay associated with an outside simulation expert

数量效益