Automated Blowdown Verification
Reduce the time it takes to verify plant depressurisation performance by 99%*
A plant blowdown is a safety critical operation that makes sure the facility pressures are reduced to safe levels in an emergency or when the plant is shut down*.
Blowdowns are fast events that rely on a hundred or more valves opening and closing at the right time. A facility is divided into different “blowdown segments” and checking that everything worked correctly for each of these segments can take an engineer a week or more.
Yet most of this time is spent gathering the right information and visualising it for each segment. Using a Knowledge Graph combined with Event Detection and a simple Python script, all part of the Eigen Analytics Platform, Eigen were able to automate this process to let Lundin’s engineers spend more time on adding value.
Typical blowdown
A typical blowdown looks something like this.
Once the blowdown valve is opened the pressure falls rapidly. There are usually performance criteria that need to be met, for example, the time it takes to reach half the initial pressure and the time it takes to fall to a safe level (e.g. <8 barg).
The Knowledge Graph
Digitising the relationships between information sources
The Knowledge Graph is a digital map of the different blowdown segments and the information sources required to do the analysis.
Summarising the performance
The most recent blowdown for each segment is summarised in a table.
Clicking a segment brings up the detailed history for that segment with interactive performance charts. Everything in the table is interactive – related information from the Knowledge Graph and other systems is just 2 clicks away in the Common Menu.
The whole sequence of detecting and calculating the blowdown performance can be automated using the Eigen Analytics Platform
Blowdown triggered
Detect value opening
Run script
Query knowledge graph
Display results
Write results set
Evaluate performance
Read pressure data from Historian
Management by Exception
Engineers can now focus on only those segments where an issue has been detected.
Rather than having to download all the information to a spreadsheet, with a single click users can create a new page with the interactive trend of the blowdown and start doing work.
User configurable Event Detection and Alerting
Users can configure event checks and alerts against any Timeseries datasource in the Eigen Analytics Platform and set up email and mobile alerts. Event checks run in realtime against the source interface.
Click here to learn more how users can configure Eigen Ingenuity:
Case Studies
Easy to read case studies, which dive into how and why our solutions are so effective.
Fast environmental reporting
Using data from Spreadsheets
Automation of weekly reports
Plant Availability
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Clients
Over the past fifteen years, we have worked with many of the major oil and gas operators. We are trusted as engineering experts who deploy digital technologies to create value.
With this cloud-based platform our engineers can continue to work remotely, and it makes it easy to keep everyone in the company informed."
