(631g) Process Digital Twins for Saudi Aramco’s Hydrocarbon Value Chain

The paper provides an overview of Saudi Aramco’s award-winning and patented approach of employing cutting edge AI and optimization technology to develop process digital twins (PDT) to optimize the planning and operations of Saudi Aramco’s hydrocarbon value chain.

In the process industry, a process digital twin is a broad concept of a virtualized representation of the plant’s assets. PDTs vary significantly in their type and implementation methodology. They can be physics-based (white-box modeling) or purely data driven (black-box modeling) or a hybrid combination (physics-informed or grey-box modeling). Depending on the sources of the data, PDT can be classified online with direct connection to the plant data or offline with no direct connection to plant data. They can also be classified as advisory or open-loop (no direct output written to the plant operation) or closed-loop (Real Time Optimizer is a typical example of closed-loop PDT).

Numerous PDT solutions have been developed and implemented to optimize the Saudi Aramco’s hydrocarbon value chain. This work showcases the development and application of the various process digital twins for the midstream and downstream processes in Saudi Aramco, including 1. an online rigorous optimization PDT for the master gas system, this PDT is used by the central planners to monitor the performance of the whole master gas system and to advise the most optimal operations when situation changes; 2. an offline PDT for the planning of the Saudi Aramco’ entire oil and gas production, this PDT shows the development of the planning models for the entire oil and gas production network in Saudi Aramco; and 3. an online advisory PDT for a gas sweetening system, this PDT combines rigorous process modeling, smart sampling and AI/ML and is used to advise the most optimal operation of an amine gas treating unit. In summary, this paper illustrates Saudi Aramco’s effort and experience in conceptualizing, scoping and deploying the PDTs.