Shandong Jingbo Petrochemical Co., Ltd.(hereinafter referred to as "Jingbo Petrochemical") is a large private enterprise mainly engaged in petrochemical industry, integrating refinery and deep processing, with advanced technological innovation capabilities in the petroleum industry.

Jingbo Petrochemical has long faced the problems of low utilization rate of hydrogen resources, high cost of hydrogen production, disorderly emission of gas, high cost of external fuel replenishment, etc. Due to the lack of professional management and optimization methods, the enterprise has unclear understanding of the operation status and utilization level of hydrogen, fuel gas and other systems, making it difficult to find effective energy-saving and emission-reduction directions.

Carbon emission reduction in process industries has become the key to the "dual carbon" goals. As a benchmark in the petroleum refinery industry, Jingbo Petrochemical takes the lead in responding to national strategy by partnering with SUPCON to comprehensively optimize public systems such as hydrogen and fuel gas, exploring new paths for energy saving and emission reduction.

Empowering Low-carbon and Green Production in Process Industries through 5T Integration

SUPCON 5T technology represents the 5 kernal technology domains in process industry - AT (Automation Technology), IT (Information Technology), PT (Process Technology), OT (Operation Technology), ET (Equipment Technology). Now in the middle of the everchanging market at the everchanging times, there emerge various complicated problems that require inter-disciplinary solutions. SUPCON 5T technology is to converge the strengths of different technology domains and solve the unsolved.

Guided by the concept of 5T integration, SUPCON conducted a comprehensive diagnostic analysis of the process, equipment, control, operation & management involved in the hydrogen and fuel gas system, to identify operational bottlenecks of these systems.

To solve the low utilization of hydrogen resources, PT(Process Technology) was used to optimize the process and achieve cascading utilization of hydrogen and fuel gas resources.

To address the issues such as low efficiency in furnace operation and improper pipeline design, ET(Equipment Technology) was used to revamp some equipment and pipelines, add monitoring devices to eliminate safety hazards, and improve equipment efficiency.

To address issues such as imbalanced production and consumption and frequent fluctuations in the hydrogen/fuel system, comprehensive revamping of processes, equipment, and pipelines was carried out.The Utility Optimization APP (OT - Operation Technology), which utilizes mechanism modeling and big data analysis with the main features of optimized operation, intelligent diagnosis and intelligent decision making, backed by the industrial Internet platform (IT - Information Technology), was combined with the control system (AT - Automation Technology) to realize the operation optimization of the pro-hydrogen plant and heating furnace, and scheduling optimization of hydrogen and fuel gas system, thus significantly improving the enterprise's operational levels.

Through the "Optimization and Revamping + Industrial Apps" model, the innovative integration of 5T technology helped Jingbo Petrochemical achieve its goal of energy saving and efficiency improvement.

Optimizing and Revamping Process and Equipment to Enhance Hydrogen Efficiency and Furnace Efficiency

Cascade Utilization to Improve Hydrogen Efficiency

By analyzing hydrogen pinch points and optimizing the super-structure model, the entire plant's hydrogen network was comprehensively optimized, fully recovering high and low-pressure gas from the hydrogenation unit, and top gas from the stripping tower. PSA exhaust gas was introduced as a hydrogen production raw material, and the process was reformed to achieve cascade utilization of hydrogen resources, significantly improving hydrogen resource utilization efficiency and significantly reducing the hydrogen content of the fuel gas system.

Reducing Hydrogen and Nitrogen to Improve Furnace Efficiency

By replacing nitrogen with fuel gas, the raw material oil filters of multiple units were revamped and multiple sets of hydrogen-containing gas emission monitoring devices were added to eliminate unreasonable nitrogen use and waste hydrogen discharge linkages. It effectively reduced the nitrogen content in the fuel gas pipeline network, increased the heating value of the fuel gas, achieved smooth and efficient operation of the heating furnace through optimized control, and comprehensively reduced the enterprise's external fuel costs.

Revamping Pipeline Network to Eliminate Safety Hazards

Based on online pipeline simulation technology, risk pipelines were identified, multiple abnormal and inefficient hydrogen and fuel gas pipelines were revamped to improve medium transportation efficiency, eliminate safety hazards, and reduce transportation energy consumption.

By optimizing and revamping the process, equipment and other aspects of the hydrogen and gas systems, significant energy-saving effects have been achieved. The overall utilization rate of hydrogen resources increased by approximately 1.7%, providing a foundation for the development of the public utilities optimization APP.

Deepening The Utilization of Industrial APP to Improve Operation and Decision Making

Refined Process Control

The platform's data integration and fusion capabilities were fully utilized to achieve comprehensive dynamic supervision and assessment of production, transportation, utilization and recovery, linkage alarms for abnormal emissions, to build a KPI assessment system, and comprehensively strengthen the refined closed-loop management of hydrogen, fuel gas resources, and carbon emissions.

Optimal Operation and Control

Aiming at the lowest cost per unit of hydrogen production, the optimal hydrogen production strategy model was constructed by integrating mechanism modeling, big data and other technologies. Based on different hydrogen demands and raw material compositions, it can adjust the load of multiple hydrogen production units and optimize the ratio between various raw materials online in real-time, reducing hydrogen production costs and carbon emissions.

Intelligent Scheduling and Decision Making

By combining mechanism modeling with big data algorithms, experience models for scheduling were created, and real-time operation conditions were quickly solved. The system tracks the dynamic operating status of the pipeline network, online pushes the optimal system adjustment and fuel replenishment plan, improves the ability to predict abnormalities, increases decision-making response speed, and reduces unnecessary fluctuations and carbon emissions caused by emergency scheduling and production condition switching.

“Collaborative optimization of hydrogen and fuel gas systems is an important practice of SUPCON 5T strategy in the field of energy saving and emission reduction for petrochemical enterprises. Through "process and equipment optimization and revamping + deep utilization of industrial APP", the operation level of hydrogen and fuel gas systems in Jingbo Petrochemical has been significantly improved. The energy consumption and carbon emission of the enterprise was effectively reduced. In the future, SUPCON will continue to deepen the integration and innovation of 5T technology, and help Jingbo Petrochemical achieve its goal of becoming a world-class green chemical industry enterprise.”