An evolving set of issues facing petroleum refiners in the U.S.

figured prominently at the

annual meeting of the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers (AFPM; Washington,
D.C.; www.afpm.org), held in March in San Francisco, Calif. Among wide-ranging sessions
on topics such as crude-oil supply, regulatory and legislative issues, fluid catalytic-crackingunit (FCCU) operations
and others, the meeting featured presentations
highlighting some of the many areas
in which petroleum refiners are looking to
adapt and improve.
One area of focus was process safety,
where a number of new tools are emerging
to help reduce human errors in refinery operations.
Meanwhile, water issues are becoming
more prominent for refineries, along with
industry in general, and the AFPM meeting
featured a session on that topic. In addition,
several presentations reported progress in
the area of alkylation technology.
Curbing human errors
In the process safety session, several presentations
focused on strategies to reduce the
possibility of human errors in petroleum refinery
operations. Yokogawa Electric Corp.s
(Carrolton, Tex.; www.yokogawa.com/us)
Thomas Fiske said data show that 42% of
negative incidents in the process industries
had human error as the major cause, and
deficiencies with procedures and employee
training were critical in the majority of those
incidents. Fiske discussed a focus on procedures,
the effective use of which can have
a major positive impact on safe and reliable
facility operations.
One error-reducing approach involves the
automation of manual procedures, a technique
pioneered by Yokogawa. Fiske said
that modular procedure automation is becoming
an increasingly popular method, not
only to mitigate human errors that are associated
with accidents, but also to help improve
product quality, production efficiency, and
capture best practices, especially in higherrisk
operations, such as startups, shutdowns
and transitions.
Procedural automation refers to the set of
activities in which operator knowledge and
best practices are captured and assembled
into specific procedures that are then consistently
followed to complete plant tasks.
Automating certain procedures can help reduce

operator workload and avoid human

errors, Fiske said.
But since automating every procedure
does not make practical or economic sense,
Fiske discussed how best to determine
which procedures should be automated. He
suggested focusing on procedures associated
with the operations most likely to lead to
production disruptions, and then determining
what type of procedure automation could
mitigate the consequences of those events.
Opportunities where procedural automation
makes sense include low-frequency, highconsequence
operations, such as startups
and shutdowns, highly complex procedures,
transitions and others, Fiske said.
Fiske also reported progress by a technical
committee under the auspices of the
International Society of Automation (ISA;
Research Triangle Park, N.C.; www.isa.
org) in formulating a consensus standard
on procedure automation in continuous
processes. The forthcoming ISA Standard
106 is in the planning stages currently, and
the technical committee is now working on
its second technical report. The committee
has already published its first technical
report: ISA-TR106.01 on Procedure Automation
for Continuous Process Operations
Models and Terminology