On behalf of a South American refining professional, Emerson’s Julie Valentine presented a case study, Impact of Refinery Mass Balance and Loss Control on Operational Excellence, at the 2019 AFPM Operations & Process Technology Summit. Here’s the abstract from this presentation:

Improving a refinery’s mass balance and loss control program for accounting, planning and scheduling, financial, and operational evaluation purposes, and having a clear understanding of the losses and where they occur is critical for performance… [they] reduced unaccounted losses from an initial 5-7% 20 years ago, to an average of 0.11% this past year⁠—with an estimated annual savings of $25 million.

Julie opened describing the refinery and their journey with a mass balance program that began 20 years ago. Losses in the refinery come through flaring, evaporation and fuel consumed. Unaccountable losses are things you can’t measure and that was a focus area for reduction.

Mass balance matters for profitability, HSE [health, safety & environment] and process optimization. Profitability is affected by the accuracy of custody transfer, and accurate payments for what is bought and sold.

20 years ago, this refinery had high levels of losses, on the order of 5% of raw material. Problems were identified in the criteria for mass balance, monthly mass balances performed, volumetric flow measurement, and more. Continue Reading ▶