West Coast Refinery Saves $1.2 Million During Alky Turnaround

This article presents a case in which a West Coast refinery averted a major turnaround disaster by leveraging a Digital Twin to course-correct an Alky Unit revamp just months before the outage.

Scan-to-model creates a false sense of accuracy, leading to poor results.

Scan-to-model creates a false sense of accuracy, leading to poor results

The project team had commissioned an EPC contractor to provide IFC drawings for many lines requiring end-of-life replacement. The EPC utilized a laser-scan-to-model approach but failed to validate their results against digital facility data.

Four months before the outage, pipe fabricators began reporting missing small-bore connections. When pressed, the EPC admitted they had not modeled small bore piping and had inserted more than 99 leave-long lengths because they were unwilling to guarantee their model for fit-up.

Faced with a critical issue, the refinery owner took over the project, implementing a Digital Twin-driven Zero-Defect work process to validate replacement spools against actual plant conditions:

• Spools were designed to fit precisely within the tie points in the Digital Twin, eliminating leave-long field fit-up work.

• Fabrication verification ensured all pipe spools met specifications and would fit within the digital model.

• Flange rotations were detected and corrected before fabrication.

• Over 420 length discrepancies that could have caused field fit-up errors were corrected.

• BOM and specification errors were identified and fixed.

• Pipe support misalignments and dimensioning issues were resolved.

 

Impact of the Zero-Defect Process:

• Dimensional and specification errors were eliminated before fabrication, preventing costly field modifications.

• Trusting the Digital Twin enabled the removal of leave-long lengths, directly saving time and money.

• The project finished ahead of schedule with zero spool rework, yielding estimated savings exceeding $2.1M and an ROI of >2,000%.

• The project manager received an award for the effort and continues to implement Digital Twin processes to ensure excellence in all piping revamps.

 

Key Takeaways:

• A Digital Twin paired with a structured quality process can guarantee project success.

• Traditional scan-to-model approaches for maintenance projects are flawed and often fail without proper validation.

• This case, along with many similar successes, highlights how Digital Twin workflows can turn high-risk maintenance outages from career-ending stressors into routine successes.

Pipe Support Misplaced in the Axial Direction of the Spool

Blunder Detected After Superposing onto Digital Facility

Left: poorly placed Tie point right: Corrected tie point location

Another Problem Resolved with Digitalization