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Apr-2012

Improved heat recovery from a hydrotreater

A Russian refinery aimed to reduce the load on a hydrotreater’s fired heater by increasing the performance of the feed/effluent exchanger

PETER ELLERBY
Cal Gavin

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Article Summary

The Russian energy market is booming. Recent figures suggest Russia is the world’s largest exporter of natural gas and the second largest exporter of oil. For 2011, the Centre for Global Energy Studies (CGES) predicted Russia’s oil production to continue growing, with aggregate output anticipated to increase by 170 000 b/d (1.7%) on an annual average basis and setting a new post-Soviet record of 10.26 million b/d.

Most of Russia’s major oil companies have seen growth in their domestic production recently. According to CGES, further development of Rosneft’s Vankor field, incremental production from TNK-BP’s greenfield projects and the addition of output from the Odoptu field to the Sakhalin production stream all contributed to output growth in 2011.

Ambitious government plans to grow and broaden Russia’s technology base are creating high-value opportunities for foreign companies with specialist science and technology offerings. With government funding, for instance, large Russian companies are being encouraged to seek partners from outside Russia to locate science-based business enterprises in the developing Skolkova region outside Moscow, referred to as Russia’s Silicon Valley.

Energy costs are a challenge
For both operators and technology suppliers, this booming market brings huge potential for growth and plenty of challenges. The Russian market is volatile and subject to strong political forces, for instance in the matter of exporting gas via pipelines to Europe. Prices are fluctuating, shareholders are demanding rapid returns on their investments, and global competition for depleting resources is driving the need for tight cost control.

In downstream oil, gas and petrochemicals, energy is one of the largest components of operating costs, and this situation is unlikely to change as oil and gas prices continue to trend upwards. Limits on nitrogen oxides and sulphur, regulations to control flaring and restrictions on greenhouse gas emissions combine to push the cost of energy up the business agenda.

In the face of such a challenge, energy efficiency and energy management are big issues for operators in oil, gas and petrochemicals. They need to reduce the amount of energy consumed by their production processes and to cut the cost of utilities, such as fuel gas, power, cooling water and refrigeration.

Opportunities for energy saving span a range of time horizons. On a scale of months to years, for example, plants can be made more energy efficient by replacing them, adding new equipment or revamping existing equipment. Within the timescale of months, weeks and days, most opportunities for energy saving occur through clever production planning (months and weeks) and scheduling (weeks and days). Over hours and minutes, process management becomes important as a source of energy savings. At the longer end of this range, the emphasis should be on giving process operators the real-time tools they need to need to make good energy management decisions within their relatively constrained environment. At the level of minutes, the biggest contributions come from advanced process control systems set up in such a way as to optimise energy use.

Packaged solutions needed
Another challenge facing oil, gas and petrochemical operators in Russia is skills shortages, although, as with the need to cut energy use, the issue is by no means confined to Russia. The UK’s Society of Petroleum Engineers indicates the average age of a petroleum worker is 51. Nearly 60% are 45 or older. An estimated 40% of the workforce will be lost over the next ten years.

According to Shell Global Solutions, US colleges produced fewer than 200 000 technical graduates to replace the two million experienced professionals who retired between 1998 and 2008. Similar problems exist across the EMEA region, where students are choosing to pursue business careers outside of technology and the process industries.

As a result, operators are trying to do more and more with less and less. It is surprising how few resources and how little experience some of the larger companies in the process industries have to draw upon. This means that clients are increasingly looking to suppliers to provide packaged solutions because they lack the capacity to do the work themselves.

Taken together, these trends are stimulating demand in Russia for a potent combination of technology and talent. To manage complex plants and processes, operators require high-quality energy 
optimisation solutions that are easy to apply, robust and proven to cut costs. There are many opportunities for specialised companies that can add value by delivering innovative energy technologies.

Energy technologies can be applied across the entire plant lifecycle, but there is a need for solutions that can boost the performance of existing plants, especially in markets such as Russia.

Case study: boosting heat recovery
Russian oil giant LUKOil is using hiTRAN Thermal Systems from Cal Gavin to improve heat recovery from a hydrotreating reactor at its Volvograd refinery. The retrofit has cut fuel consumption by $ 233 000/y and made it possible to increase throughput in the future.

Until 2009, a fired heater in the refinery’s modern catalytic reformer was consuming around 330 kg/h (727 lb/h) of fuel to raise the temperature of a reactor feed stream. This was expensive in itself, and a planned increase in throughput would have made matters worse. Not only would the amount of fuel required have tripled, but the increased duty would have been beyond the capacity of the existing fired heater.


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