Optimization Solution to Increase Profit of a Hydrocracker at a Major Refiner in Saudi Arabia

Business Objective:

To Increase Profit of a Hydrocracker at a Major Refiner in Saudi Arabia

A major refiner in Saudi Arabia approached Lummus Digital with the aim of increasing profit from its hydrocracker. The business objective included:

To run the plant at the most optimum profit
To respond faster to the changing market conditions by adjusting the unit to produce the optimal product mix i.e. increase the yield of the most valuable product
To get more value from the plant, i.e., increasing yields, reducing energy / utilities consumption

Key Solution:

Build a Digital Twin and have the Hybrid plant model mimic the physical plant behaviour with accuracy of ~98%
Employ Supervised machine learning, which utilizes 1 year of historical operating process and lab data
The Kinetics model for various conversion levels is instituted, which may be unknown to AI model in the event if the same conversions don’t exist in the data
The AI optimizer is fed with configurable objective functions and required constraints of parameters to perform equipment duties like increasing diesel yield or increasing unit margin

Business Impacts & Outcomes:

Increased profit due to increase in diesel yield : Avg. $6 Million per year
Savings in energy/utilities consumption: Avg. $1 Million per year
Solution enabled the hydrocracker to respond promptly to the dynamic market changes and determine the best optimal product mix.
Derived more value from the plant, i.e., increased yields, reduced energy / utilities consumption
Improved life of equipment as well as reduced labor and spare parts opex