Digital Transformation Front and Center at Turbomachinery & Pump Symposia

Overview

ARC Advisory Group attended the 48th Turbomachinery & 35th Pump Symposia (TPS) in Houston in September.  This year’s event drew 4,875 verified attendees from 51 countries, up slightly from 2018.  A total of 355 companies (down from 365 in 2018) exhibited all things related to compressors, turbines, pumps, sensors, condition monitoring, remote monitoring solutions, and more.  We saw many interesting solutions on display and had many interesting discussions.

From ARC’s perspective, the event provided an informative and interesting line-up of content that included detailed case study presentations, lectures, short courses, tutorial sessions, and interactive discussion groups on a range of topics related to turbomachinery and pumps.  The event also provided an excellent opportunity to do some first-hand supplier research for our market research on both compressor and turbine monitoring & controls and optimization.  While we obviously couldn’t cover everything, some takeaways from the activities that we did attend follow.  

Focus on Asset Integrity, Data, and the Need for AI and ML

In his keynote presentation kicking off the event, Ryan Sitton, Texas Railroad Commissioner, provided an  overview of his background and experiences as an inventor, engineer, entrepreneur, and public servant, and how he founded PinnacleART, a one-thousand-person firm focused on asset integrity using mechanical modeling on four million asset implementations.

Mr. Sitton recounted his experience in a refinery in Northern Texas back in 2007 where he was implementing a mechanical integrity program using some of the new systems in risk-based inspection.  The client indicated that they found an “issue” and wanted his feedback.  Apparently, one of the operators had found some hot spots on the heater tubes using a thermography gun.  This sparked a heated debate among twenty-plus people about the projected reliability of the heater tubes, the potential impact, and whether they should shut down now and repair the heater tube or wait six months for the turnaround.  In response to his questions about how much additional hard data and operational metrics were available for decision support related to this potential heater problem, it appears that the answer was “not a whole lot.”  Ryan kept asking himself “how much data do we have” to address this heater and how much relevant data on key operational metrics existed.

Mr. Sitton hypothesized that if that discussion was happening today, twelve years later, it would not be all that much different than it was back in 2007.  This, despite the fact that everyone is talking about leveraging data better to improve asset reliability and hundreds of millions of dollars are being invested toward this end across industry.   According to Mr. Sitton, the questions about “what do we know?” and “where can we get more data?” remain.  This leaves it up to the plant manager to decide which of the myriad of opinions he/she should listen to make a rational decision.   The PM needs to understand what their respective motivations are and the decision processes his/her people are going through. 

He cited studies on the human process back in the 1950s by Daniel Kahneman, an Israeli psychologist assigned to the Israeli Defense Federation, who was assigned to try to figure out which Israeli officers would be good leaders. He developed a series of interviews based on behavioral economics that helped predict the future performance of Israeli officers, who subsequently became among the best in the world. Mr. Sitton cited Kahneman’s book, "Thinking, Fast & Slow," in which he talked about the decision processes that motivates people.  He also cited Maslow’s “Human Hierarchy of Needs” and the strong need for humans to belong and have a sense of purpose.   Mr. Sitton then brought the discussion back to the heater tube situation.  He mentioned how we are still calling in experts to try to gain some sort of consensus and still face the issue of data overload and the strong need for artificial intelligence and machine learning to remove human bias and avoid the pitfall of group think.  

He used the analogy of the issue of heart disease back in the 1970s.  While “experts” had opined that eating more carbohydrates and reducing intake of dietary fats would reduce the incidence of heart disease, it appears that these experts had not bothered to look into the adverse impact of excessive carbohydrates on obesity and diabetes.  Today, an abundance of research indicates that excess carbohydrates and sugar are causing obesity.  Group think (“what everyone else is doing”) based on a sense of belonging and sense of purpose can have adverse outcomes since humans have a tendency to first look for a solution, and then seek out or interpret data that backs up or supports their original opinion.  He cited the movie “Moneyball” and how the use of analytics and key data metrics often lead to measurable success in professional sports. 

Mr. Sitton also addressed how to identify true domain experts.  He mentioned that his own refinery domain expertise was based on his visiting more than half of the refineries in the US, serving as an expert witness, helping correct existing standards on mechanical integrity or degradation of assets, and so on.  Sitton admits he is not an expert in equipment failures, but is on asset degradation.  His point here is that we do not have enough equipment failures to gather sufficient data to form expertise, but we do for degradation of assets.  He cited data indicating that, over the last ten years, the average utilization in refineries has ranged from 82 percent to 93 percent. He said there are only about 110 catalytic crackers in the US and there were only about two failures during the last three years, and this is insufficient to form expertise.   

Sitton talks about how to increase refinery utilization to 93 percent or greater by combining data and models in a way we have never done before.  He believes that historically from the 1970s through the 90s, refinery utilization was improved by focusing on specific equipment such as a compressor or pump but, today, improving refinery utilization involves systemwide issues. The need for data and data analytics are stronger today than ever since most process systems are so complex.  The future is going to be experts putting their knowledge into models to be able to gain expertise in why equipment fails.  Based on the average refinery output of 130,000 barrels per day and assuming a $5 crack spread; realizing a 10 percent utilization improvement would translate into between $12 and $15 million in savings per refinery per year.  It is not just about the machines operating in the plant but also the “machines” that are making the decisions.

ARC Walks the Exhibit Floor 

ARC had the opportunity to walk the entire show floor and visit almost all 355 exhibitors.  Selected takeaways follow. 

Bently Nevada Press Conference

Bently Nevada hosted an interesting press conference highlighting the release of the Orbit 60 Series, the company’s next-generation condition monitoring and protection platform.  The first intrinsically cybersecure vibration monitoring system with a built-in data diode; the Orbit 50 Series is designed to ISA 62443 Cybersecurity Standard.  Terry Knight, President & CEO of Bently Nevada, commented that while Don Bently had founded the condition monitoring market over two decades ago, this is the company’s first major release in twenty years.  He called the Orbit 60 a step change solution.

Some of the key highlights to the Orbit 60 Series, according to the company,  include:

• Enhanced analytics – the system has 100-times higher signal processing power than the industry standard
• Scalability and flexibility – architecture can support up to 80 dynamic data channels per rack (versus industry average of 50) with variable signal processing
• 50 percent smaller form factor than the company’s previous 3500 Series, optimizing space and reducing associated costs for installation, operations, and maintenance
• Performs high-resolution offline data storage for incidents, ensuring continued access to data even during a network interruption
• Has SIL 2 and 3 certification for confidence through redundancy measures

The company touted the Orbit 60 Series as a high-end technology designed to help users in oil & gas, power generation, water & wastewater, automotive & aerospace, among others, operate mission-critical assets with increased safety and increased uptime to support operational excellence. Bently Nevada beta tested the solution with 60 customers (most were 3500 Series users).  The resulting feedback revealed the desire for a smaller form factor, increased flexibility, scalability to add sensors and increase monitoring capability, and the ability for customers to write their own rules.  Positioned as an edge device, the Orbit 60 Series enables customers to  analyze data either at the edge or in the Cloud - a good option for fleet-level analytics.

Growing Demand for Intelligence in Rotating Equipment

To gain fresh insights related to ARC’s recently updated Compressor Monitoring & Controls market analysis report and ongoing updates to our Turbine Monitoring & Controls market analysis report, we spent a lot of time visiting with suppliers of compressors, turbines, and rotating equipment monitoring and controls during the event.

These included visits with Compressor Controls Corporation (CCC), Bently Nevada (Baker Hughes), Siemens, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Aerzen USA Corp, Ariel Corp, Atlas Copco Gas and Process, Kobelco Compressors America, Ingersoll Rand, Burckhardt Compression (US), MAN Energy Solutions, Elliott Group, Voith Turbo, GEA Systems North America, Solar Turbines (a Caterpillar Company), Schneider Electric, Emerson, Howden, Hoerbiger Compression Technology, Windrock, Woodward, Energy Control Technologies (ECT), Sullair A Hitachi Group Company, PDC Machines, York Process Systems, and Drake Controls, among others. 

One general takeaway from these many meetings is that these suppliers see increasing awareness and demand for intelligence in critical rotating equipment used across multiple industries to help improve asset management through on-board diagnostics, remote communications, and advanced analytics.

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Keywords: Turbomachinery & Pump Symposia, Compressors, Turbines, Condition Monitoring, Remote Monitoring, Digital Transformation, Pumps Optimization, Bently Nevada, ARC Advisory Group.