30-04-2020

KBC to deliver a site-wide process digital twin to Rompetrol

KBC (A Yokogawa Company) will deliver a site-wide process digital twin to Rompetrol to sustain the value of ongoing margin improvement and digital transformation activities at the Petromidia refinery in Romania. The digital twin, based on KBC’s Petro-SIM process simulation software, will improve techno-economic aspects of the refinery’s operation, delivering improved profitability, reliability and safety.
 
Activities to optimize production processes at the refinery started in 2014 and have successfully continued to date, supported by KBC. KBC’s involvement initially began in the form of a Profit Improvement Program®, part of which involved the provision of advanced proprietary process simulation technology, Petro-SIM. Rompetrol’s next step will be to operationalize Petro-SIM as a refinery-wide process digital twin to sustain the value obtained in earlier optimization activities. The digital twin will automate modelling activities, reconcile data from a wide range of refinery sources and complete site-wide optimizations.
 
Through the digital twin, Rompetrol’s process engineers and planners will identify, capture and sustain on-site productivity and efficiency improvements across the entire refinery. The digital twin will also interpret optimization gaps and enable valuable insights to be delivered to non-software specialist users, such as frontline operations, as well as other departments.
 
“Purchasing the Petro-SIM based digital twin technology was a logical next step after completing the improvement roadmap in 2015, where KBC provided consulting support to us. The software opened new improvement opportunities and defined boundaries of production units.” said Kuanysh Dosmuratov, Deputy General Manager of Rompetrol, adding “Now, we are stepping further with our digital twin initiative. The project’s objective is to reduce giveaway through improvement in planning and response times of operations to market changes.”

“The digital twin is a fantastic enabler for Rompetrol to drive convergence in understanding and action throughout their business, enabling superior results to be sustained,” adds Mike Aylott, Chief Technology Officer of KBC. “It serves as a solid foundation to build further artificial intelligence and machine learning based predictive analytics capabilities, ensuring that data quality issues are identified and mitigated.”