Digitalisation is only scratching
the surface
Digitalisation usually means upgrading a few elements of technology or
workflows, leaving a partial digital twin when a holistic approach is needed
Andrew Mcintee and Arjun Balakrishnan KBC (A Yokogawa Company)
T
he refining industry is constantly searching
for profitability typically found by squeez-
ing a little more production or improving
the way things are done from existing assets.
Low hanging fruit has largely been picked, and
trying to improve further with current methods
is difficult and costly in the industry’s prevail-
ing compartmentalised organisation. With dig-
ital transformation, we can move beyond doing
the same things better and eliminate this ‘silo’
bias. Digitalisation allows every bit of ‘change
what’s going on faster’ to be improved; every
element is enhanced, and profitability benefits
are magnified.
Profitability is the goal, and specifically for the
industry this means improvements in value in
the following areas:
• Reduced investment cost
• Reduced operating cost
• Optimum production for the current market
conditions
• Balancing asset maintenance cost and
availability
• Focused employee support
• Reduced risk.
This value is being sought constantly. Internal
departments, technology and service compa-
nies, and contractors all are tasked with the
goal of improving one or more of the above
value points. Existing biases, lack of priority,
capital constraints, and business justification all
prevent full value being captured at one time
or another. All too often, solutions are broken
down and applied to only the one area that
helps the key stakeholder most. At best, other
areas and stakeholders get some reflected value;
at worst, the value created for one is to the det-
riment of another. This issue is not a unique
www.digitalrefining.com/article/1002348
feature of the oil and gas industry; all busi-
nesses suffer similar issues. However, we can
see where digitalisation has helped some busi-
nesses create value and benefit all areas through
a holistic solution. Sometimes this has been
completely disruptive; at other times it greatly
enhances what companies are already doing
well.
The oil and gas industry has seen some effort
made in digitalisation, but not to the extent of
other industries, and the legacy technology that
is firmly established is limiting opportunities for
innovation. One reason why is that other indus-
tries have reasonably linear work processes,
where steps follow one another in a well-defined
path. The oil and gas industry is different – it has
very complex iterating work processes across
many areas. For instance, in the optimisation of
downstream feed networks and production facil-
ities, there are a great many interactions between
strategy, planning, scheduling, process engi-
neers, reliability specialists, unit licensors, util-
ity engineers, and asset suppliers, to name but a
few (see Figure 1). The final design is a myriad of
trade-offs, assumptions and assumed overall best
value that in some cases has taken many years
to manifest across workflows. Digitalisation
will enable technology to give deeper integra-
tion of the current engineering silos, quicken
iterative workflows, simplify the complex, and
deliver huge value in optimisation across all
stakeholders.
Finding out what’s going on
The current problems are well known through-
out the industry and everyone has an opinion
of what the most pressing and solvable problem
is at the time. Personal expertise, experience,
PTQ Q4 2019 1

Supply chain Supply chain Supply chain
optimisation management scheduling
Plan vs. actual
vs. optimal
Production Production
accounting scheduling
Asset Profit Process & utility
optimisation improvement optimisation
Process and Procedural
off-sites automation APC
automation
Figure 1 Complex interactions in optimisation
trusted data sources, and available tools shape
only the information available for individual
groups. It is well recognised that this is not ideal,
and regular meetings are set, in both an opera-
tions environment or in project design, to update
others on the data and information each group
has.
The transfer of information is intended to form
more data for a group to make a further, more
informed judgement. In the case where data is
not transferred or badly transferred, assumptions
need to be made, and time is spent judging the
worth of the assumptions as well as rectifying
them once the assumption is proved wrong. The
cost of all this is time.
There are really two steps when digitalisation
enables better outcomes. First, data is ready and
secondly data is connected. This creates a single
source of the truth that is available to all stake-
holders and is constantly updated in real time.
To counter this in non-digital workflows, com-
mon thinking is to share more data. But adding
more data without it being reconciled and under-
stood, what it is, where it fits, and how it con-
nects is just as bad. You may have the best tools,
the most experience and the key expertise, but
with data: ‘garbage in, garbage out’ is often the
outcome. Before being ready to use data to make
2 PTQ Q4 2019
Strategy Corporate business
plan
Supply chain Annual Investment
planning planning planning
Production
planning
Capital support
Process Feasibility
Debottlenecking design study
decisions or data that is being fed to software
applications, a process needs to be in place to
systematically assure its quality. It will cost a lit-
tle more to sort it early on, but that is better than
blindly trusting the data and needing to rectify
your actions later. Only then is it fair to declare
it as a data store (the ‘data lake’) and the system
of record.
Once the data process is established, the fol-
lowing questions can be asked:
• Data sufficiency – do you collect all the neces-
sary values?
• Data trust – are instruments of adequate accu-
racy and reliability for their intended purpose?
• Data propagation – when a change is made in
the field, how does the system of record know
about it?
• Data governance – is there an ownership
record for each data point?
Individual departments have many data
sources, often on locked-down systems or hidden
away in obscurely named folders. Connectivity
covers the methods and tools needed to make
this data accessible to all users and systems. This
can run from physical infrastructure to cyber
security, but for engineering departments this
means simulation tools and physics models.
Currently, throughout the design stages, many
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hundreds of simulation models
are created. There are typically Supply chain Production
optimisation management
many different revisions as a
project progresses, or a whole Supply chain
planning Backcasting
new model as it assimilates
another department’s output. Production
Production
planning
With digitalisation, there is a sin- accounting
gle model that is set up as a digi- Production
Yield and energy
tal twin, constantly synchronised scheduling
Simulator improvement
with the system of records via Plant-wide
Unit
always up-to-date asset models optimisation
monitoring
of the plant (see Figure 2). Real-time
Equipment
A digital twin is relevant optimisation PI monitoring
and APC
beyond the engineering depart-
Asset performance
ment. It is a decision support Operator
management
decision support Petro-SIM 7
tool that enables improved APM
safety, reliability and profitabil- Strategic capital
project master Operator training
ity in design and operations. It is planning
a virtual digital copy of a device,
system or process that accurately
mimics actual performance in Figure 2 Digital twin interactions
real time, that is executable
and can be manipulated, allowing a better out- hand-offs for change, which starts many weeks
come to be developed. The  model develops as before to ensure that change happens at the
the asset develops and more history of both is appropriate time.
attained. Failure to achieve this level of rigour results
The core of a digital twin is the simulation in large amounts of firefighting with the asso-
model, intrinsically integrated with the required ciated increased costs of manhours and effort.
thermodynamics, data system of records and However, if the balance is wrong, with too much
detailed analytical tools, such as pipeline net- emphasis on the application of workflows, this
work or gas turbine power models. Connecting makes a business sluggish and typically builds
all the best tools, such that they run and update up silos between departments.
automatically, will massively reduce the time A cost-conscious culture has meant that tal-
for iterating information and the time spent ent is sometimes just not available in sufficient
in update meetings or costly remedial fixes. quantities. Slow responses are a typical result as
the workforce tackles its priorities. Iteration and
Making the change compromise between groups is needed. The time
Breaking each step down into the questions for iteration, checking and rechecking acceptable
that need to be asked when considering change limits and finally negotiating an outcome is long.
can make that change easier: why and when to Typically, this arrives at a compromise prone
change, what to change to, and how to change. to large margins of error that is only mildly
For engineers, workflows and departments beneficial.
have traditionally been organised to monitor, Digitalisation has enabled all of the required
analyse and answer the why and when ques- expertise to collaborate in optimising change.
tions. The question of what to change is more The expert can use the digital twin to gain an
complex due to the nature of the industries’ accurate representation of the asset over its full
processes and extended value chains so that range of operation, and capture the full history of
people meet to get inputs from groups with dif- the asset. Regular model runs enable connected
fering expertise. How to change is the validation analytics to run options for optimisation and
of ideas to give the overall optimum outcome. arrive at actions that are most beneficial over the
Historically, this has meant buy-in and trade- life of the asset without the need for extensive
offs. The outcome of this effort is cleanly defined meetings.

www.digitalrefining.com/article/1002348 PTQ Q4 2019 3

 Doing it faster
A digital twin will benefit speed in a number of
ways. A single version of the truth with shared
data and outputs will reduce the time required
for error checking. Automatic updates propa-
gate through the integrated models to deliver a
solution that is feasible for all parties. Integrated
models that have a common basis, a simpli-
fied and consistent user experience, increase
the speed of solution through alignment of out-
comes that balance complexity with speed.
Access to knowledge allows the user to under-
stand the need and prioritise the change with
clear action plans. This enables high speed of
implementation.
Digital twin
A future ideal is one multi-purpose digital twin
which aligns asset lifecycle and value chain by
running off ubiquitous data sources at appro-
priate computing speeds. We are not at the ideal
yet, but development teams are heading there.
Full stream
Full stream thinking means creating an end-to-
end technology platform centred around engi-
neering simulation software that revolutionises
supply chain optimisation in downstream and
production optimisation in upstream across the
lifecycle of an asset.
Common environment
A common environment models, simulates, and
optimises production and processing facilities at
various levels of detail and with the appropriate
level of fidelity, enabling design, production and
process engineers to:
• Optimise engineering workflows, reducing
time and effort involved from identification of a
problem to implementation of the solution
• Compare different production scenarios and
engineering solutions, to reduce design margins
and improve the accuracy of forecasting
• Create realistic plans, and identify the gap
between the plan and reality to convert it into an
actionable plan on a routine basis that enables
realistic production goals
• Improve production monitoring capabilities
and prevent production losses
• Exploit synergies between different skills and
enhance teamwork and the efficient utilisation of
resources.
4 PTQ Q4 2019
The Cloud
The Cloud can engage people and technologies
from outside corporate boundaries. An example
is augmentation with georeferenced 3D visualis-
ation models in remote or resource-constrained
environments – the Cloud allows remote subject
matter experts to use the digital twin as if they
were employees present on site. The Cloud ena-
bles the digital twin to subscribe to external data
feeds that can enrich its resolution.
Scratching the surface
In a case study of the optimisation of a greenfield
refinery and petrochemical complex with asso-
ciated feed, product and utility infrastructure, a
holistic digital model of all elements, crucially
including water, steam, power and hydrogen,
quickly allowed the owner to save capital, ongo-
ing operating costs, water usage, energy, and
carbon footprint. At the centre of this was the
construction of a digital twin founded on a Petro-
SIM process flowsheet, with utility, detailed unit
simulation and equipment models.
KBC was asked, as technical advisor to the
billion-dollar project, to ensure that the strate-
gic goals of the project were met using expertise
and digital twin tools. One specific goal was to
be a top quartile energy performer. Early in the
engagement, it was clear that the licensors, con-
tractors and asset suppliers had submitted pack-
ages based on the limited information they had
been given. They had stuck to their brief, utilis-
ing the digital tools they had, and all played their
part to be the cheapest and simplest solution to
be built within the project’s time frame.
This siloed view was compounded by the inclu-
sion of the utility systems at the end of the stage
as a ‘bolt-on’ to satisfy the different processes. One
of the specific results in this case was several addi-
tional utility boilers offsetting imported power by
condensing, through turbines, the excess steam in
normal operation. The size of the utility system
was also governed by the reliability of a couple of
units for a one-in-multi-year event. At this point, it
was a business risk to proceed or not.
However, there was a change in the project’s
fundamentals, and this is where the need for
deeper integration through the digital twin was
demonstrated. The energy costs were updated
to reflect current levels, and the digital twin
immediately flagged that the power strategy
had flipped, favouring power import. The own-
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ers now had a risk and financial decision to trade
against project time in reworks.
Historically, to maintain project timescales, this
would have proceeded with a few tweaks, but
with most of the project being built as per the
design. Start-up would have to deal with excess
steam, learning the lower limits of boiler firing
and accepting built-in inefficiencies. At a busi-
ness level, operating costs would be higher than
those of peer companies. This would place the
company in the second quartile for energy effi-
ciency and there would be acknowledgement of
a certain level of regret capital.
The creation of the digital twin and subsequent
deeper integration of all the stakeholders into the
design provided a clearer understanding of what
was going on. The digital twin allowed the utility
system to be reconfigured at the same time that
the licensor’s changing requirements for steam
balance were updated.
Different complex-wide design configurations
were tested, and the digital twin focused discus-
sions on boiler ramp-up rates and the complex-
ity of control, which was subsequently clearly
demonstrated to all. Meetings took decisions
rather than providing updates, revising data or
being concerned over the pressing timescale.
The resulting design eliminated utility boilers
and the associated turbines, saving $30 million
in capital investment costs. The move away from
condensing turbine power will save an annual $40
million in operating costs, with a massive reduc-
tion in carbon emissions and water usage. The
final utility system realised using the digital twin
has lower costs and increased reliability and avail-
ability. The digital twin ensured a robust and opti-
mal design by enabling all possible scenarios to be
simulated, studied and mitigated.
Conclusion
Nearly all companies are progressing with digi-
talisation, and valuable results have been taken
from some of their efforts. Efforts, however,
have been confined to upgrading one or two ele-
ments of the technology or workflows, leaving a
‘partial’ digital twin. This is scratching the sur-
face of the digital transformation and threatens
to undermine effort. Workflows and processes
will trend back to the status quo, optimum out-
www.digitalrefining.com/article/1002348
comes will not be reached, and valuable results
will be unsustainable. Data driven analysis must
be combined with physics models in the digital
twin.
Deeper integration of the technology will turn
a partial digital twin into a full one. The latest
generation of simulation tools has native data
connectivity and data models to allow seamless
digital integration. The technology packages in
the case study are heading towards the digital
twin ideal.
The result can be completed by all the group
utilising the digital twin with remote expert guid-
ance as needed. The optimum is reached within
the iterations of the model and available to the
project as soon as the solution is reached. Outside
the operating envelope, impacts are immediately
visualised and alerts for action sent. Updated
data or strategic goal changes can see new results
quickly, with all the corresponding information
fed automatically to those who need it. The project
calculates the value of the change, its impact with
mitigating actions and revised priorities, such that
the project team can respond faster.
The digital twin upgrades technology, inte-
grates departments, aligns workflows and cap-
tures full value.
Petro-SIM is a trademark of KBC (a Yokogawa Company).
Andrew McIntee supports KBC’s global initiatives with over 12
years’ consultancy experience where he has helped evaluate,
prioritise and decide on the technical optimisation of clients’
facilities. He is a chartered engineer and holds a master’s degree
from the University of Leeds.
Arjun Balakrishnan is a senior energy consultant based in
Singapore and is the Technical Lead of KBC’s Energy Co-Pilot
Hub. He has worked on a number of energy efficiency projects,
and holds a master’s degree from the University of Manchester.
LINKS
More articles from: KBC (A Yokogawa Company)
More articles from the following categories:
Instrumentation, Automation and Process Control
Process Modelling and Simulation
PTQ Q4 2019 5