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A pioneer of the Northeast startup incubation facilities, iDEATION 2017 was launched by Numaligarh Refinery Limited (NRL) on the 4th of July 2017. An initiative to promote entrepreneurship among the North East's local youth, NRL iDEATION invited proposals for seed funding, early-stage funding, and scale-up funding.

iDEATION 2017 was a success with an overwhelming response of over 362 startup ideas. Over the years, 20 promising startups grabbed the opportunity of funding, mentorship, and incubation owing to their promising business ideas.

This year we have come up with an exciting challenge, a special segment on "AI/ML-based solution for Refinery Material Balance" for budding entrepreneurs and AI/ML developers to join our forum.

We look forward to providing much-needed incubation, nurturing, and infrastructure to growing businesses of the Northeast and energize the startup revolution of India. If you want to be a part of it, read on to know more about the AI/ML-based startup challenge.

An Overview of Refinery Material Balance and Decision Points

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Refinery material balance is a mass balance. Reconciliation is the process through which material entering into the refinery (raw material and other inputs), going out of the refinery (sales and inventory of products), and fuel & losses incurred during the refinery operations are accounted for. The output of a reconciliation process is the refinery's material balance for a particular period (day, month, or year). The reconciliation process requires data from various sources: Tank Gauges, Flow Transmitters, and Quality Specifications (Temperature, Density) of the materials that move from the input side to the output side of the refinery. Fuel is consumed in the refinery furnaces for heating the streams going as input to the units and generating electricity, steam, and other utilities in the refinery. There can be various loss sources like losses in lighter products' flaring, fugitive emission from vessels, and storage tanks. A material balance captures the breakups of inputs going into the refinery at different levels.

Although preparation of material balance is a purely mathematical exercise of calculating the total mass of inputs, outputs, fuels used, and losses incurred in the conversion process, some decisions are taken by the person doing the reconciliation based on experience gained over a period of time. A few examples of such decisions taken purely based on knowledge and experience of the person doing reconciliation are given below:

1. Fuel and Loss (F&L) is a major parameter derived from a refinery material balance. Fuel & loss is basically the difference between inputs given to a refinery and outputs obtained from a refinery during a particle time period. In the case of a refinery similar in size and configuration to NRL, F&L is generally in the range of 10- 10.5% on total inputs. If the F&L calculated is beyond this range, the person doing the reconciliation will try to determine the mismatch source.
2. Unit wise fuel consumption is also calculated daily. The summation of unit wise fuel consumption figures for a period constitutes the Fuel portion of the Fuel & Loss calculated as the difference between inputs and outputs of the refinery (refer 1). Obviously, the remaining part of Fuel & Loss is the loss portion. If the loss portion is found within acceptable limits and consistent with historical data, the material balance is correct. If the figures are not consistent, further drill down is made at individual unit level material balance (input, output, fuel & loss of individual units) to identify the error in Flow Transmitter reading, abnormal gain or loss in the unit, etc.
3. Mass Flow Meters are much more accurate than Orifice Flow Meters. A refinery unit with more Mass Flow Meters in the input and output streams has less error in the unit's material balance. Errors in the units' material balance are likely to be more where most of the Flow Transmitters are Orifice Meters.
4. A person who prepares the material balance always compares the yields (quantity of any output stream as a percentage of inputs) of any unit with the unit's design yield. A quick analysis is done for any deviation observed in the unit wise material balance.
5. Individual unit wise product yields are checked while doing the overall reconciliation of the refinery.
6. Individual unit wise product yields are checked while doing the overall reconciliation of the refinery.

 

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NRL iDEATION is inviting promising AI/ML developers from across India with promising solutions and business ideas to join the challenge. To know more, visit our website and follow us on our socials to stay updated. Last day for registrations - 31st January 2021.