In order to comply with the new consumption standards, Total is committed to improving its French refineries' efficiency and competitiveness. In this context, the Normandy refinery asked Prosim to implement Ariane software in its production system.

Background

Originally, to significantly improve the production and reduce the consumption of utilities, ProSim, together with Total, developed Ariane software. The main goal was to meet the requirements in terms of optimization and to provide guidance and practical suggestions for other industries where in-house management of energy requirements (steam, electricity or hot water) is a key parameter of the production process.

Ariane is an optimization software for the energy production plants (steam, hot water, electricity). It aims to reduce the energy bill by seeking the ideal production configuration, by taking into account the demand (steam and hot water) and by considering all of the production constraints.

The Normandy refinery project succeeded because these important three goals were achieved:

• To implement Ariane to improve the steam and electricity production efficiency on the Normandy refinery site.

• To map out carefully energy consumption and production in real-time.

• To use the model to foresee the impact on the plant production of the addition of a unit, of a device, of a turbine disruption on the plant production equilibrium.

The objective

To optimize the production of the Normandy refinery plant to reduce the production costs.

The solution

To implement Ariane in order to:

• optimize the on-site production and real-time consumption system;

• highlight the potential benefits to propose relevant practices.

The results

• A minimum savings of €930,000 for 2011.

• The total gains amount to more than 2.5% of the plant budget (steam purchase and electricity).A global energy efficiency improvement thanks to a real-time follow-up of the refinery's electricity and steam production system.