CASE STUDY

Major oil and gas company saves 300.000+ EUR per day by changing blending components

BMA - Gasoil blending optimization

The Company

A major oil and gas company, producing fuel oil and jet fuel in Europe, planned to introduce changes in their blending process and recipe. Their profit on the product was lower than it should have been, therefore they wanted to optimize their gasoil blending. The goal was to minimize the quality-giveaway and keep component costs as low as possible. The company already had dedicated colleagues internally to focus on the opportunity. As a first step they started to look at their blending process with optimization software, to understand the size of the opportunity.

The Challenge

The optimization software helped the team to understand that there are real savings that could be generated by changing the gasoil blending process and recipe. However, the company got stuck. As each component has its own blending properties, it was far too complex to redefine and change the blending recipe for the 8 components manually. They had to maintain the right quality, that also fits regulatory requirements for the gasoil, while minimising expensive components. Their laboratory and manual processes couldn’t crack the equation. In the meantime they had to satisfy the daily production of the 70.000 m3 liter gasoil.

 

The Solution

The company therefore asked for our professional services. The process started with a site survey with our engineers on-site to understand goals, targets and the company’s problem. Following a proposal of the project cost and timeline, we kicked off the project with one of our blending experts.

During the year-long, challenging project we managed to develop a tailored software solution which helped to measure and continuously analyse the quality of the gasoil during the blending process. The optimizer takes each components’ properties and costs into account, and modifies the component recipes continuously during the blend in order to come up with minimised component costs without compromising on the quality by the end of the blend. Our solution successfully provided the customer with an on-spec product with minimal costs.

Surprisingly, by completely leaving out the most expensive component from the blending procedure, the gasoil still kept all the mandatory qualities. Furthermore, the software was able to correct the recipe during blending in case the target tank wasn’t empty.

 

The Benefit

Thanks to the tailor made and precisely configured optimisation engine the project showed a full return on the investment in only a couple of weeks! The project managed to:

  • Simplify laboratory work during the blending process and minimise the necessary quality checks, so that experts can focus on improvements.
  • Keep gasoil quality consistent thanks to the software and sensors that analyze quality continuously.
  • Most importantly reduce component costs significantly, over 300.000 EUR per day, by completely removing the need for the most expensive component, without compromising on quality.

Case summary

Company Major oil and gas company
Industry Oil and gas
Location Germany
Solution BMA
Project lenght 1 year
Outcome 300.000€ savings per day

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