Plant Performance Monitoring: Improving Surveillance of Rotating Equipment on a Gas Processing Plant

Abstract

Abstract Capitalizing on early successes in advanced well control and real-time monitoring, Total has engaged in a major "Digital Field" initiative aimed at developing real-time asset management. Combining both proven and leading-edge technologies such as real-time databases, web services, business orchestration and a distributed asset model, the Field Monitoring template proves to be a powerful tool to improve global asset management and optimize the oil and gas production chain, from reservoir to export facilities. The field monitoring solution is being implemented as a set of independent yet integrated modules. This paper presents the concept of one of the modules, the Plant Performance Monitoring (PPM) module, a real-time remote monitoring system dedicated to surface facilities. It presents and discusses early results of a pilot application to surveil major rotating equipments at a 520 mmscfd gas processing plant located on the Tierra del Fuego site in Argentina. The objectives of the pilot are as follows:The primary objective of the pilot is to demonstrate a near real-time tool that provides advance notices on abnormal plant trip.To provide plant staff with quantitative Key Performance Indicators (KPI) such as efficiency, machine availability and utility consumption.To allow proactive maintenance, most particularly, to anticipate the effects of operational changes on assets.To provide cause and effect analysis using near real-time information available from separate components such as vibration monitoring systems, process data historians … The PPM-Rotating Equipment (PPM-RE) application integrates online process simulations which provide new insights in terms of conditional maintenance and actual production potential or constraints. After several months of operations, The PPM-RE pilot has demonstrated its ability in improving diagnosis and decision-making through prompt collaboration between Cañadon Alfa site and Buenos-Aires (local headquarters several thousands kilometres away). Such an application can also allow the difficult-to-troubleshoot cases to benefit from the TOTAL headquarters and research centers anywhere in the world.