TOTAL REFINERY ANTWERP
TOTAL REFINERY ANTWERP
HOW NEW TECHNOLOGIES IMPACT THE ROLE OF RELIABILITY ENGINEERS - CASE STUDY AT TOTAL REFINERY -
Franky Oste works as a Reliability Engineer at Total Refinery. Total buys crude oil from all over the world. This means that the Antwerp plant benefits from a whole scale of different crudes, implying that every installation needs to be adaptable. This makes Franky’s job extremely demanding and confronts him with new challenges every day. At Asset Performance 4.0, he likes to share his insights with you.
Reliability is key y role at the refinery is to guarantee that our installations get the longest possible life, and to avoid problems with the machines,” Franky explains. “We don’t want to start a shift with lots of problems and technical outages, whether it’s rotating or static equipment. That’s why we try to get the most out of the asset life time and go for maximum availability of our installations.”
can show you when there’s a failure. It’s like the blood in your body that can be analysed in order to detect illnesses or abnormalities. In machinery, it’s exactly the same thing.”
Maximizing the lifetime of an asset also means gaining money. You don’t need to invest in new equipment when the old one is still working fine. “Some equipment at the refinery is older than I am - and I’m 59,” Franky laughs. “We have new equipment too, but it’s always a goal to maintain the oldest installation equally well. It’s a challenge to keep everything running and to avoid incidents. That’s where I come in as a Reliability Engineer.”
Detect, predict and prevent “I started working for BASF Antwerp in 1984. After a couple of years of wrench work, I immersed myself in reliability. Since 1987, my main focus has been vibration measuring. IRD was the market leader, if I recall correctly. We’ve come a long way since then, with a wide range of available techniques and a lot of programs which make life much easier and quicker. We can detect, predict, prevent… in mere seconds. This is what makes reliability so interesting for me.”
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Franky uses different techniques in his job, from extremely early problem detection and problem solving, to handling them in a proactive way to further avoid problems. “We use a wide array of techniques, such as vibration measuring, ultrasound, flow measurements, infrared measuring… Oil analysis is of course of the utmost importance for us. In many cases, a simple oil sample
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“Another advantage of oil analysis is that you can predict when your machine is going to fail. It’s very interesting data, because you can easily let the machine run until 5 minutes before the failure,” Franky explains.
In recent years, the job of a reliability engineer evolved quite a lot. “In the beginning, it was very difficult for the older generation to come to terms with the new technologies. But now it has become easier. Reliability is now even taught as a university course. When I started, there was no such schooling. Only the guy with his screw jack lis-
tening to the machines. And now, the young guns are already learning the different techniques from a young age. It’s beautiful to witness, really.” And now the next leap is digitalization. “It’s still a big step to take, and that makes it a really nice challenge, even for the new generation,” Franky concludes. The future of Reliability Engineers With 35 years of experience, how does Franky look at the future? “In the past, I always needed to go to - or even in - the machines, which wasn’t always safe. With new technologies, like contactless sensors and the amount of data they generate, the analysis is much easier, much quicker, and a lot more safe, than what I grew up with.” He gives an example: “When I did the first measurements on a pump, it took me two minutes. And then I still needed to go inside. Now, it doesn’t even take one second. And the system already gives you a suggestion for solutions: an imbalance, or bearing damage. You just need to look and select the right solution.” The only requirement for good decision-making is the input of reliable data. If you put garbage in, you also get garbage out. “When you put the wrong bearing in the system, then the system
