The Latin American refining sector continues to invest in digital solutions to meet the region’s growing demand for energy while addressing sustainability goals. The Latin America Refining Technology Conference (LARTC) is the main downstream event where the region’s most influential senior executives meet to explore the value new technologies can deliver and recognize outstanding achievements in Latin American refining. During this event, AspenTech won the “Best Digital Technology of the Year” award with Aspen GDOT^™. The award recognized the company’s successful track record, for nearly two decades, of delivering significant improvements in margin and energy efficiency through its innovative closed loop, multi-unit dynamic optimization technology.

The AspenTech team celebrating the “Best Digital Technology of the Year” award win at LARTC on September 13, 2022 in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Best Digital Technology of the Year: What Sets Aspen GDOT Apart?
GDOT enables global refining companies to vertically integrate planning, scheduling and advanced process control (APC) layers to work, adapt and optimize together. By closing the gap between layers, refineries can maximize margins by reducing product giveaway and maximize production of most valuable products while advancing towards sustainability goals.

Delivering Higher Levels of Operational Excellence to Refineries Worldwide
Compañia Española de Petroleos S.A.U. (CEPSA), a multinational energy company with headquarters in Madrid, expanded the capacity in its La Rábida Refinery, as it was becoming increasingly complicated to integrate new units in a coordinated manner for optimal operations. Balancing the site hydrogen network was becoming more complex, leading to hydrogen losses to flare and fuel gas networks. Moreover, on-site hydrogen production was highly carbon-intensive. With Aspen GDOT, La Rábida Refinery optimized their hydrogen network by prioritizing and maximizing hydrogen feedstock to key consumers and minimizing hydrogen flaring by 750 Nm3/hour and reducing CO₂ emissions by 4,200 tons/ year. This resulted in about €450K/year of savings in 2019 and based on current natural gas and CO₂ emissions prices, savings in 2022 will be considerably higher.

Ecopetrol, the largest petroleum company in Colombia and a leading refiner in Latin America , was already using Aspen DMC3^™, Aspen PIMS-AO^™ and other AspenTech solutions. The refiner selected Aspen GDOT software as part of its digitalization initiative to improve refining margins at its two refineries in Cartagena and Barrancabermeja. Together, these “state-of-the-art” production optimization technologies give Ecopetrol facilities the agility and operational flexibility needed to adapt to market demands.

 

 

A Digital Solution for Latin American Energy Growth
Market dynamics and the region energy sector will continue to evolve presenting new challenges to the downstream sector. With its innovative award-winning dynamic optimization technology, AspenTech will continue to provide the Latin American energy sector with digital solutions to face these challenges and reach new heights of operational excellence while driving sustainability targets.