Hydrocarbon Processing - April 2021 - 31

Special Focus

Clean Fuels
C. HARCLERODE, OSIsoft, Houston, Texas

Leveraging digital technologies to create
the smart renewable diesel facility
Many companies are modifying existing crude refineries or building grassroots
renewable diesel facilities to produce
drop-in, green renewable diesel from a
variety of agriculturally derived triglyceride feedstocks. The key drivers for this
global trend are regulatory, tax and social
pressures to lower the carbon intensity of
transportation fuels.
The renewable diesel production process offers many challenges that can impact
safety, reliability and profitability. These
challenges range from feedstock availability, variability, gumming, metals, corrosion
and wax formation in the pretreatment
unit (PTU) or feed pretreatment train
that can affect safety, operability, catalyticbased yield and profitability of the renewable diesel unit (RDU). The RDU also has
a high-reaction exotherm and is vulnerable
to several types of corrosion, such as hightemperature hydrogen attack (HTHA),
which can be addressed using approaches
such as analytics, integrity operating windows, real-time decision support and automated safety shutdown systems.
Companies that are moving into the
production of renewable diesels can mitigate the safety and processing challenges
in the PTU and RDU by adopting digital
technologies used by leading hydrocarbon
processing industry (HPI) companies.
Such operators have achieved a 2%-4%
increase in effective capacity by improving asset reliability; providing real-time,
proactive decision support; reducing operating and maintenance (O&M) costs by
3%-5%; increasing EBITDA performance
by 3%-5%; and improving safety.
These leading HPI companies are using a critical real-time data infrastructurea that enables subject matter experts
(SMEs) to configure no-code operational
digital twinsb of asset classes (e.g., pumps
and reactors) and develop smart applica-

tions like HTHA analytics. The asset class
templates are then used as building blocks
to create an operational digital replica of
their PTU, RDU and associated supporting production infrastructure such as
hydrogen sources, utilities and logistics.
This digital infrastructure enables a layered approach to descriptive, diagnostic,
predictive and prescriptive analytics, and
provides proactive real-time, exceptionbased decision support.
This article will present how this leading digital technology can enable operational intelligence and continuous improvement, and also increase flexibility,
capacity and profitability for renewable
diesel production in both grassroots and
retrofit scenarios.
The challenges of renewable diesel manufacturing: Safety, operations and profitability. Two primary

approaches exist to the development of
renewable diesel production. Each will be
presented, with associated reasoning and
a similar method for leveraging the operational data infrastructurea.

Approach 1: Existing petroleum refinery retrofit. Companies are moving

forward with modifications of existing petroleum refineries for cost, time to market,
margin and best alternatives to shutting
down the petroleum refinery, with the
associated environmental and regulatory
challenges. However, modifications of existing hydrotreating facilities and associated infrastructure present the following
six challenges1 that a real-time data infrastructurea can help mitigate:
1. High-reaction exotherm
and associated emergency
depressurization systems and
liquid recycle and quench
systems-The operational
data infrastructurea is used by
leading HPI companies to help
mitigate this challenge through
proactive, exception-based
decision support. The operating
windows (OWs) and integrity
operating windows (IOWs)
can be configured to combine
various process parameters and
to provide improved awareness of

FIG. 1. Example of configuring OWs and IOWs in the real-time operational data infrastructure.2
Hydrocarbon Processing | APRIL 2021

Hydrocarbon Processing - April 2021

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