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Training Simulators Make Real Difference

Jan. 20, 2016
Operators gain proficiency faster and safely experience abnormal situations

Operator training simulator (OTS) technology is becomingly increasingly important in the drive to maximize personnel, project and process performance, as the experiences of vendors including Emerson Process Management, Schneider Electric and Honeywell Process Solutions show.

A major refinery in Texas typifies what OTS can deliver. The site, which had converted key process areas to Emerson Process Management’s PlantWeb architecture featuring the DeltaV distributed control system (DCS), used OTS to prepare employees with the knowledge of how to get the greatest performance and cost benefits from its new system.

Emerson’s educational services experts delivered a hands-on, process-specific training program; simulations exposed operators to what they would experience in their actual control room and allowed them to practice and respond to process upsets. This enabled the operators to gain confidence and experience in an offline, no-risk environment prior to actual plant operation.

The refinery reported the training program exceeded all its expectations and was crucial to improving operational readiness and results. The OTS is an integral part of plant life now, providing training for new operators and refresher training and practice for experienced ones in handling potential incidents.

Within DeltaV’s “simulate” environment, operators get to use exactly the same configurations they would use in a real system. “This is very unusual in the market as most other DCS systems have to be used in an offline environment and require modification, translation, etc.,” notes Mark O’Rosky, OTS engineering manager, process systems and solutions, Round Rock, Texas.

Also unusual, he says, is Emerson’s use of an open environment for process simulation; pretty much any modeling software package — indeed any software with an OPC interface — can talk with DeltaV.

Key Element

Figure 1. Both trainer and student use the same screens in Emerson’s OTS approach. Source: Emerson Process Management.

The trainer environment is another differentiator, he adds. Many other DCS companies have process simulation packages that include, for example, instructor function pieces for grading/scoring scenarios and student monitoring; so, a user must create a simulation package linked to the vendor’s own software. “We draw a different boundary at Emerson. We have created a trainer environment so you can do scenarios/grading, etc. within the DCS environment… We can use anybody’s process simulation package — and keep the instructor/student functionality in the DCS environment. So the training environment is in the same DCS for both the trainer and the student, i.e., they use the same screen [Figure 1]. That’s a very big thing for us,” adds O’Rosky.

The Value Of Virtualization

Virtualization, which has become increasingly popular for automation projects (see: “Chemical Makers Embrace Virtualization”), also can impact training. For example, a company might have difficulty justifying an OTS for just one small gas plant. However, if it has four or five similar plants, a single trainer hosted in central engineering can support all the units; operators at any facility can access it simply by logging in.

Large sites also can benefit. For instance, in the past a chemical complex with numerous processing units might have had a training system for each. However, with a virtualized training system, you can train operators on any unit individually or on any combination of units. This gives users huge flexibility in terms of training.

“It means that you can achieve in a morning and an afternoon what previously could have taken a week. And utilization of the trainer has gone right up, too. For example, at one site a chemical company is closing in on 3,000 hours of operator training with the simulator being used at all hours, including evenings and weekends,” notes O’Rosky.

This also is helping to tackle the demographic challenge posed by the industry’s aging workforce (see: “Plants Grapple with Graying Staff”). Emerson’s own research shows that training an operator to the appropriate level can take 6–7 years. Simulation speeds this up substantially, it says.

A Fertile Approach

Fauji Fertilizer Company (FFC) provides another example of how OTS can improve operator performance — and even drive business expansion. FFC has been manufacturing fertilizer products since 1982 at its site at Goth Machhi, Pakistan. When the company decided to commission a new DCS at the oldest of its original plants, it also was keen to add an OTS that could serve as the basis for a plant-wide training protocol. FFC’s aims for the OTS were quite specific: decrease the risk of major operational incidents; reduce startup and shutdown times; increase the plant’s onstream time; and improve response to emergencies.

FFC also wanted the OTS to help with broader personnel challenges. Like many chemical companies, it must contend with the looming retirement of numerous experienced personnel. The company also faced another challenge common to many chemical manufacturers — how to expose new hires to critical and emergency scenarios that happen only infrequently.

FFC chose OTS technology from Invensys, now a unit of Schneider Electric, for a number of reasons, including that it’s a direct-connect system with no requirement for translation, emulation or recompilation of the system configuration. In addition, the company considered the process and system model technically superior, with high fidelity and good accuracy.

Because FFC also opted for its products for the new DCS (Foxboro I/A) and emergency shutdown safety system (Triconex Tricon), Invensys could easily and efficiently integrate the OTS control configuration, graphics, operator consoles, shutdown configurations and other elements as part of the overall DCS deployment.

FFC’s training regime followed a “train the trainer” approach. This began with the training of two lead engineers — one each from two of the three major plants in the complex. Over the next 12 months, the company ran 130 training sessions. Today, nearly 100 managers and operators have received training on the simulator by 22 in-house-trained OTS instructors drawn from all three plants.

“Operators performed remarkably well after training, even during their initial days of independent duty on the control board. With the Invensys OTS, we’ve achieved steadiness in plant operation, we’re training people more rapidly and it’s supporting our continuous development efforts,” notes Mubashar M. Butt, deputy manager of production.

The company also plans to reap the benefits of its training strategy further afield, as part of a consortium building a large-scale fertilizer plant in the Lindi area south of Dar es Salam Tanzania. The plant is expected to be onstream by 2020, producing 1.3 million mt/y of fertilizer.

FCC’s involvement focuses particularly on the safe and reliable running of the new plant, together with the training of local staff in Tanzania. It also marks the beginning of the company’s “global aspirations” project to make international use of the operational and training skills it has developed with the OTS in Pakistan.

Rejuvenating A Refinery

Another company to turn to OTS to improve training and production is Rosneft, Moscow. Two years ago, the company took over a refinery in Saratov, Russia, which began operating in 1934, and identified clear training needs there.

Rosneft selected Honeywell’s OTS with the target of realizing a number of major benefits. The first was to reduce startup times and sustain safe, optimum production by improving the skills needed to monitor and control processes during startup and shutdown, as well as training on safe control in normal, abnormal and emergency situations.

The company also sought to improve operator diagnostic skills and the efficiency of their training while at the same time to reduce incidents and enhance process safety.

In addition, it wanted to safely expose workers to isolated safety incidents caused by both external and internal disturbances, including operational disorders and breakdown of various types of equipment.

To date, the refinery has used the OTS on projects including a new catalytic reformer and a newly constructed isomerization unit. A computer-based OTS for the site’s pressure-swing adsorption unit also has been successfully designed and implemented.

The Honeywell platform used for all the simulators includes elements such as a process simulation engine, a control and emergency shutdown simulation engine, and an instructor workstation.

The Future

The benefits of OTS, while now increasingly well documented, likely will grow further as the technology continues to evolve.

For instance, Emerson is developing internal tools that can take a database and create tie-back modules in just a couple of weeks. “Quicker model incorporation shortens all delivery times,” notes O’Rosky.

So-called multi-purpose dynamic or lifecycle simulation also is receiving attention. The aim is for a simulation model to be able to handle the whole project lifecycle rather than discrete parts of it. “We’ve already seen that simulation software is being used for design, checkout, training, optimization, etc. So we want to increase the value that this simulation can provide. This is happening now, notably with large oil and gas companies such as Statoil and Shell taking the lead,” he says.

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