A Breakthrough Technology to Predict Process Risks for Improved Reliability and Safety: Case Studies from Petronas Abf Operations

Most of the incidents and unexpected process failures can be avoided if the operating team gets timely information about developing risks and takes preventative action.  While advances have been made in process risk management in the past few years, there still remain significant information gaps that prevent facilities from proactively managing process risks.

Asean Bintulu Fertilizer (ABF), a subsidiary of Petronas, produces 700kMt of Urea annually.  Due to the nature of materials involved and interdependency between its operating units, it is critical for ABF to maintain safe and reliable operations.  Unsafe plant conditions may lead to process safety incidents, which in the worst case, can cost lives, risk the business, and jeopardize the reputation of the organization.  Similarly, downtime, due to unreliability of equipments, can lead to opportunity loss.  Because of these reasons, minimizing process safety and reliability risks – by keeping the operations within the safe zones – is the highest priority for ABF’s operating team.  Although ABF is equipped with the latest tools in process monitoring, such as Alarm Management System (AMS) and Plant Management Information System (PIMS), and historians, these tools have their limitations, particularly, lacking predictive risk capabilities.

A new software, Dynamic Risk Analyzer^TM (DRA), based on proprietary predictive risk analysis, is outlined in this presentation – with examples of its application to identification of potential problems.  DRA allows operating team to assess the risk level of its plant operations and identify early indicators of developing process risks daily.  Based on Near-Miss Management LLC’s patented methods, DRA’s predictive risk assessment technology empowers operations teams (plant managers, supervisors, and engineers) to discover potential failure conditions at their formation stage before they become visible.  Hence, they operate processes, reliably and safely, with reduced risk profiles and improved capital effectiveness.  The powerful risk indicators are computed by analyzing all of the process (online sensor) measurements and alarm data.  With advanced drill-down capabilities, the plant personnel are pointed to parts of operations that are deteriorating – allowing them to deploy the right resources, to plan JIT maintenance, and to head off potential problems – several days or even weeks in advance.

ABF adopted the DRA system at their facility in December 2014.  Since then, ABF has embarked on improving its organizational approach to managing process risks by focusing on leading risk indicators pointed by DRA.  The facility has already benefited by early identification of plant problems, leading to avoidance of potential process safety and plant reliability issues.  Its risk indicators are an integral component of operating personnel’s daily routine and meetings.  Real life case studies will be discussed in this presentation, along with detailed resolution of some operational issues that were detected and addressed early on.