Utility Disturbance Management in the Process Industry

Abstract

Use of utilities, such as steam and cooling water, is very common at industrial sites. Utilities are often shared between several production areas, and a disturbance in the supply of a utility is therefore likely to affect a large part of the production site, and cause great loss of revenue. In order to minimize the loss of revenue due to disturbances in utilities, the optimal supply of utilities to different areas has to be determined. It is not evident how utility resources should be divided, as both buffer tank levels, the connections between areas and profitability of different areas must be considered. This thesis presents a general method for reducing the loss of revenue due to disturbances in utilities, the Utility Disturbance Management method (UDM). The method concerns identifying disturbances in utilities, estimating the loss of revenue due to such disturbances, and finding strategies for reducing the loss. A model of the production site is needed to complete all steps of the method. In this thesis, some modeling approaches are suggested, and on/off production modeling with and without buffer tanks is described in detail. The UDM method is applied to an industrial site at Perstorp using these two modeling approaches