Revamping plants is more complex than building new plants. Existing equipment needs to be analyzed, performance predicted, and integrated with new equipment and process changes. Process sequence changes also require evaluation for finding the most cost effective and reliable revamp. Modern simulation tools have eased this task considerably. A case study with the evaluation of several options to a crude unit is examined.
Existing equipment poses both challenges and opportunities in a revamp. Challenges due to limitations, both hidden and obvious, must be met. Opportunities come from using underutilized capabilities of the existing equipment. Correctly identifying both limits and opportunities provides the lowest investment revamp.
Processes include more than just equipment. Processes include specific linkages between equipment to achieve the operating plant objectives. Revamps must examine both the capabilities of the equipment and the opportunities available from changing the process sequence (or operating conditions).
Correctly integrating equipment and process evaluation requires good field test data, an accurate analysis of the data, and putting together the proper team of generalists and specialists for a given revamp.
No revamp is the same as any other. Every plant is different.
All equipment and every process has different limits and different
opportunities. The case study shows how a specific petroleum crude
distillation unit revamp evolved as it was better understood by
using simulation models customized to fit plant data and specific
plant limits.
13 pages.
Electronic version available in Adobe Acrobat PDF format file
082.PDF 192k.
Request paper 082.