BAYERNOIL Asset Management

BAYERNOIL Asset Management Automated with Ex Mobile Computers One refinery, three sites: this is the BAYERNOIL refinery network. Its three plant sections in Ingolstadt, in Vohburg and in Neustadt on the Danube are connected to each other via 16 pipelines so that they cooperate as if they were one single refinery – a refinery extending on 33 km altogether. Every year the approximately 830 employees process 12 million tons of crude oil. This makes BAYERNOIL the biggest refinery in Bavaria and one of the biggest crude oil processing companies in Germany.
		The refinery network is mainly supplied by the transalpine pipeline leading from Triest via Ingolstadt to Karlsruhe on a length of 759 km. Through this pipeline, crude oil from Africa, Russia, Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, Norway and other important oil producing countries is transported to Bavaria. In the BAYERNOIL plants, the employees process the oil to produce high-quality products such as gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, liquid gases, heating oils and bitumen for the owners of the refinery sites.
These in turn deliver the products to trade partners and consumers. End products, applied materials and intermediate materials are stored in the tanks of the three plant sections whose total capacity is 3.4 million m³. In a refinery like BAYERNOIL an efficient asset management plays an important part. To optimize the asset management, BAYERNOIL is automating the data acquisition of maintenance and inspections. The aim is to make available all device data - from inspection intervals to prophylactic maintenance – in one system. Explosion-protected mobile computers with WLAN connection made by BARTEC, and the Traq360 mobile plant inspection software made by iNetsoft Consulting in Strasbourg create optimal conditions. Mobile in explosion-hazardous areas: Mobile Computers of the series MC 9060^ex
		The robust mobile computers of the series MC 9060^ex made by BARTEC offer all ergonomic and technical features required in modern industrial applications in the fields of petrochemical, chemical and process engineering industry. The high-performance hand-held mobile computer MC 9060^ex is a compact unit for sophisticated data acquisition (barcode acquisition) in field applications. Its robust design is reliable even in rough applications under extreme and unstable ambient conditions and changing working conditions like they exist in the refinery operation.
Due to the optimized energy management, the operating time of the battery is sufficient for a complete work-shift. Due to the design in the ignition protection type “intrinsically safe“ and “powder filling“, it can be applied directly in explosion-hazardous areas of zone 1. Due to the comfortably accessible scan trigger and the ergonomic design, it can be operated with one hand. The integrated WLAN connection allows a real-time data exchange with the host system. The MC 9060^ex unites all advantages of the Microsoft pocket PC platform and the strengths of the Intel^® XScale^TMPXA255 processor with 400 MHz. It offers a legible ¼ VGA color display with appealing touch-screen technology. The MC 9060^exseries supports the radio standard IEEE 802.11b. System architecture The Traq360 software installed on the MC 9060^ex is based on the Microsoft Windows Mobile platform and - for the management of the inspection tours – on Microsoft Excel. Synchronization can be carried out with conventional Microsoft applications for Ethernet and WLAN. The simple system architecture means that in the normal case no adjustments in the existing EDP architecture are required for applying Traq360. As Traq360 is a mere client application, no server software has to be installed, configured and managed. The inspection tours for Traq360 are configured and managed with Microsoft Excel. They are structured very flexibly on the basis of the plant structure, on the type of inspections and controls, on the preferred order of measurement and control points and on the shift scheduling. The data exchange, e.g. with process guidance systems or maintenance systems, is carried out via a text file solution. In this way, system integration expenditure is drastically minimized. Data acquisition
All devices in the plant are identified by a barcode. After having been read in, all automatically measurable features are available on the mobile computer and can be directly controlled. In an automatically opening window, the normal state for all features that are not measured automatically is queried, e.g.: leaks noises vibrations
Effect As a result from this, it is possible to detect beginning problems at an early stage and to react prophylactically. The time between the detection of problems and the maintenance measures to be initiated can be enormously shortened. A significant increase of the monitoring quality has been achieved. All measurement data is available to the refinery information system in electronic form. It is not necessary any longer to consolidate and manually evaluate the hand-written inspection protocol. The documentation of the regular plant monitoring is available with time stamp. This significantly simplifies the officially required proof of the fact that the operation is in accordance with the regulations. Due to the increased plant availability resulting from the improved maintenance and plant operation, the operating result has been improved. Particularly obvious are the reduced maintenance costs due to the improved transparent diagnosis for machines, instruments and piping systems. Another effect which should not be neglected is the fact that all existing stocks of chemicals in the plants can be easily captured. The electronic capture makes repeat orders significantly easier. Moreover, the stroke of the dosing pump is recorded. This allows to verify the observance of the specified dosage and prevents damages of the individual machines, for example caused by corrosion and deposits.