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Petrochemical Equipment Diagnostic |
Background:
In oil refineries, the distillation tower is used where a thermal cracking process takes places. Crude oil is fed through an inlet to the tower in which heat is applied to produce gasoline as well as other petrochemical products, as shown in the figure. To control the production, cooling is applied through the cooling coil is placed from the bottom to the top of the tower.
Problem:
the gasoline yield at an oil refinery was low.
Objective:
isolate and fix the problem (fault) in the distillation tower and the manufacturing process, so as to fix it and increase the gasoline yield.Approach:
use data mining techniques to diagnose the thermal cracking setup of the towerFinding:
Result:
the length of the cooling coil was too short in the tower.
after enlarging the coil, the gasoline production was increased by 10,000 tons per year.