Refining margins are at record highs globally due to pent up demand for refined products coming out of the pandemic, particularly diesel and gasoline, and a supply chain that is still recovering from the pandemic’s disruption and also being impacted by reduced product exports from Russia. The sharp increase in demand has depleted global inventories leaving diesel stocks at a 30-year low. Reductions in refining capacity over the past few years have exacerbated the problem leaving operating plants struggling to process enough crude to satisfy the increased demand for fuels. 

Like the adage, “Strike while the iron is hot,” timing is an important consideration for refineries looking to take advantage of a rising energy market that is expected to continue throughout 2022 and beyond, according to many economists. Dynamic optimization is a digital solution currently being used by refineries to maximize margin and throughput.  

AspenTech’s award-winning solution, Aspen GDOT^TM, provides multi-unit dynamic optimization to improve margins and achieve sustainability objectives by vertically integrating planning, scheduling and advanced process control in closed loop. In today’s environment, for many of GDOT’s longer-tenured customers, it is delivering even more impressive results, often 5X initial targets, unlocking higher levels of production by minimizing product quality giveaway and optimizing the most valuable refinery products such as diesel. These users are looking to accelerate GDOT adoption across the enterprise and replicate significant value realized from their existing GDOT applications.  

Heide Refinery Shares GDOT Insights During Webinar 

While Heide Refinery, one of Europe’s most complex refineries, is a newer GDOT user, it has already experienced positive results. Heide recently co-sponsored a live webinar with Advanced Manufacturing Technologies and AspenTech to share insights on multi-unit dynamic optimization and discuss how GDOT has enabled it to:

• Improve operational agility to maximize the most valuable products 
• Precisely control significant blend component qualities to minimize quality giveaway 
• Close the gap between planning, scheduling, APC and operations 

Following are insights Heide shared during the webinar… 

…on its motivation for implementing GDOT: 

“We needed to further improve our middle distillate blend components in a way that qualities are produced in a more stabilized way and consecutively, with reduced quality giveaway for industrial gas oil (IGO) and diesel.” 

“The motivation to set the quality targets at the output side of the middle distillate system by a supportive system which adjusts the process units upstream accordingly brought us to implement Aspen GDOT.” 

“The solution is the implementation of Aspen GDOT, a closed loop multi-unit dynamic optimization, to close the gap between planning, scheduling, APC and operations.” 

…on its reported outcomes of using GDOT: 

“We are able to fully set the middle distillates blend component quality targets at the output side of the refinery, so upstream unit operations are adjusted automatically for an optimized solution.” 

“After aligning how to best utilize GDOT, the quality giveaway costs could be reduced by 90% and 100% for IGO and diesel, respectively and overall quality giveaway by an average of 80%.”  

 

Certainly, current market conditions present a very compelling case for GDOT to optimize refinery production, improve operational agility and maximize profitability.  

 To learn more about Aspen GDOT and gain additional insights, view our On-Demand Webinar “How Heide Refinery Maximizes Middle Distillate Profitability with Dynamic Optimization.” Then, contact your local AspenTech team to see how GDOT can help you.