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What Are Refinery Turnarounds and Shutdowns?
Refineries are the backbone of modern society, transforming crude oil into the fuels that drive our daily lives. However, like any intricate machinery, they need constant care to maintain peak performance and ensure safety. This is where the turnaround comes in—a critical planned maintenance period that is often overlooked but is vital to the long-term health of the refinery.
Unlike flashy shutdowns in the headlines, turnarounds are highly detailed and precise events. Engineers, inspectors, and specialists spend months preparing, assessing equipment, detailing tasks, and coordinating resources. In this guide, we’ll delve into the refinery turnaround process, exploring everything from meticulous planning to the essential tasks and collaborative efforts that ensure a smooth transition from operation to maintenance.
Refinery turnarounds are scheduled shutdowns of refinery operations, typically occurring every three to five years. These events are strategically planned to include preventive maintenance, renovations, and upgrades, ensuring safe, competitive, and compliant refinery operations. During a turnaround, specific units or the entire refinery may be temporarily taken offline to allow for thorough inspections, testing, and necessary repairs.
The planning and execution of refinery turnarounds are complex and require meticulous coordination. Often scheduled during periods of low production, skilled labor is readily available. The duration of turnarounds varies, ranging from a few weeks to months, depending on the project’s scope and any unforeseen issues encountered. If problems are identified during inspections, the turnaround duration may be extended to address them comprehensively.
Turning our attention to the difference between shutdowns and turnarounds, a shutdown is a temporary halt in operations, either planned for maintenance or unplanned due to emergencies. It is shorter in duration and usually affects a specific unit. On the other hand, a turnaround is a comprehensive, planned shutdown for the entire facility or a major unit. It involves preventive maintenance, upgrades, or extensive repairs, lasting weeks to months and causing complete production halts.
In addition to shutdowns and turnarounds, there are unplanned interruptions called outages. These are caused by equipment failures or unforeseen events and can vary in duration and severity, potentially leading to significant disruptions and financial losses.
Turnaround time is critical for refineries. Every minute a refinery is offline translates to lost production and revenue. For a large refinery, even a single day of downtime can cost millions of dollars in missed sales, impacting the company’s financial performance. Turnarounds themselves are expensive undertakings, requiring significant manpower, materials, and specialized equipment. While the refinery isn’t producing, expenses like salaries, security, and overhead still accrue, further eroding profits during the turnaround period.
Beyond the financial aspect, turnarounds involve extensive maintenance and repairs, often with hazardous materials and equipment. Reducing turnaround time is crucial not only for financial reasons but also for minimizing personnel exposure to potential risks. In a competitive market, quick turnaround times help refineries swiftly resume operations, regain market share, and stay ahead of the competition.
The refinery turnaround process unfolds in distinct phases, each with specific tasks and goals. The initial phase begins with a thorough risk assessment, analyzing potential hazards like equipment failures and environmental concerns. The team outlines the turnaround, specifying equipment and processes, creating a detailed plan that serves as the blueprint, guiding resources and priorities.
With the plan set, detailed work orders are crafted as task scripts, including materials and timelines. Budgeting follows, ensuring optimal financial management. The scheduling process becomes crucial, creating a detailed timeline that guides every activity. Open communication is established between teams to ensure smooth decision-making. Safety takes center stage, with thorough training ensuring personnel can navigate the turnaround safely, adhering to protocols and procedures.
As the turnaround date approaches, the refinery transforms into an examination room. Technicians focus on inspecting and cleaning equipment, scrutinizing every component for potential issues before maintenance. Material procurement ensures necessary supplies are readily available, while administrative processes begin, covering permitting and regulatory compliance to ensure adherence to environmental and safety regulations. Isolation and depressurization procedures are executed, creating a safe working environment for technicians during the shutdown.
On turnaround day, the refinery gracefully enters its shutdown phase. Technicians secure equipment access and isolation, creating safe workspaces for maintenance within the broader shutdown. Caution prevails during hot work, with meticulous management of sparks. Rigorous safety measures, including permits, minimize the risk of fire or explosions during welding or cutting.
The repair crew steps into the spotlight, armed with diagnoses. Technicians adeptly replace worn-out parts, fix malfunctioning components, and address identified issues with meticulous precision. The turnaround isn’t just about repairs—it’s a chance for upgrades and modifications. New equipment, improved processes, and technological advancements seamlessly enhance efficiency, capacity, and overall refinery performance. Quality control is paramount, with meticulous checks and non-destructive testing ensuring everything stays in tune.
In the final stage, thorough pre-startup checks ensure a safe and efficient restart. Every system undergoes meticulous examination, eliminating room for last-minute surprises. Once all systems are ready, the controlled startup and optimization phase begins. The refinery gradually awakens, fine-tuning processes for optimal production and efficiency. A comprehensive post-turnaround evaluation and lessons learned session identifies areas for improvement and documents valuable insights.
Traditional inspection methods are often slow, manual, and require extensive scaffolding, leading to increased downtime in refinery turnaround processes. JOUAV introduces a revolutionary drone ecosystem designed to address these challenges, offering cutting-edge technology and an intelligent inspection platform. This combination empowers refineries in several key ways:
- Reduce turnaround time by up to 30%
- Minimize safety risks for your workforce
- Cut inspection costs by 20% or more
- Higher data processing efficiency
The CW-15 VTOL drone is ideal for covering vast refinery complexes. With a 1200-hectare coverage area and a 180-minute flight time, the CW-15 efficiently captures comprehensive data. It creates detailed 3D maps, inspects pipelines for leaks and corrosion, and patrols the perimeter for security threats, offering real-time situational awareness.
The PH-7E multirotor excels in detailed inspections of critical assets like heat exchangers, reactors, and distillation towers. Its hovering capabilities allow for precise data capture, even in hard-to-reach areas. The PH-7E also monitors hot work activities from a safe distance, ensuring safety protocols are followed. In emergencies, its rapid aerial assessment expedites response times for first responders.
The JOUAV Intelligent Inspection Platform boosts efficiency, offering closed-loop inspections with automatic analysis through accurate machine learning algorithms (over 90% accuracy). These algorithms swiftly identify issues like corrosion, leaks, vegetation encroachment, and security threats. Upon detection of anomalies, the system initiates work orders in the maintenance system, assigning tasks to relevant personnel. Users can effortlessly track the progress and completion of work orders, while the platform supports ongoing tracking and analysis for continual improvement and prevention of similar incidents.
For streamlined data management, the platform provides secure cloud-based storage, organizing images, sensor readings, and annotations. Sharing dashboards and reporting tools facilitate communication and collaboration among inspectors, engineers, and maintenance personnel. Additionally, the platform enables real-time dynamic monitoring of information related to drones, personnel, and vehicles.
A turnaround is far from a routine workday; it's a complex event encompassing up to 150,000 different activities. Several key factors contribute to increased risk during a turnaround:
An influx of additional workers during a turnaround, including contractors, agency personnel, and temporary staff, significantly alters the workforce dynamics. This surge, sometimes doubling or tripling the regular workforce, introduces an elevated level of risk. To mitigate these risks:
- Conduct comprehensive safety inductions for all new personnel, emphasizing site-specific protocols and emergency procedures.
- Implement a buddy system, pairing experienced workers with newcomers for guidance and support.
- Ensure clear and consistent communication through regular briefings, signage, and readily available safety information.
To facilitate the cleaning, repair, and reinstatement of machinery, an array of additional equipment and vehicles is mobilized during a turnaround. This includes cutting and welding apparatus, as well as machinery for power washing and deposit softening. The introduction of more machinery not only raises the exposure to gases but also amplifies the risk of collisions due to the increased presence of vehicles.
To manage these risks effectively:
- Conduct thorough risk assessments for all brought-in equipment, ensuring proper maintenance and adherence to safety regulations.
- Implement traffic management plans, including designated walkways and clear markings for vehicle movement.
- Enforce mandatory use of appropriate PPE, including hearing protection, respirators, and high-visibility vests.
Executing a turnaround involves accessing areas of the plant that are not conventionally designed for human occupation. Workers venture into confined spaces such as shafts, manholes, tunnels, and tanks, intensifying the potential for toxic gas build-up or oxygen deficiency. These confined spaces pose various challenges, including restricted movement, reduced lighting, communication difficulties, and potential rescue complexities.
To ensure safety in confined spaces:
- Conduct thorough permit-to-work procedures before any confined space entry, assessing risks and implementing necessary controls.
- Continuously monitor oxygen levels and gas concentrations within the confined space.
- Utilize proper ventilation systems and maintain clear communication with personnel outside the space.
The inclusion of additional machinery and vehicles during a turnaround inevitably results in elevated noise levels. Studies indicate that hazardous worksite noise is prevalent, with workers in industries like oil and gas extraction facing a significant risk of hearing loss.
To mitigate noise risks:
- Conduct noise level assessments and implement noise control measures like soundproofing and barriers.
- Enforce mandatory use of hearing protection devices like earplugs or earmuffs.
- Utilize alternative communication methods like hand signals or radios in areas with excessive noise.
Turnarounds often necessitate "hot work" projects, like welding, cutting, brazing, soldering, and grinding. These activities carry a potential risk of accidental ignition of flammable materials. Additionally, there is the possibility of flammable gases leaking into the work environment from hot work equipment, further increasing the complexity and risk associated with such tasks.
To ensure safety during hot work:
- Implement strict hot work permit procedures, clearly defining authorized areas and precautions.
- Conduct thorough fire risk assessments before commencing hot work, removing or isolating flammable materials wherever possible.
- Provide fire extinguishers and fire blankets readily accessible in hot work zones.
During a turnaround, periodic power shutdowns are common, creating higher-risk conditions. Studies indicate that a significant percentage of work-related accidents in manufacturing plants occur during maintenance outages.
To manage power outage risks:
- Develop and rigorously test comprehensive emergency response plans for power outages, including backup lighting and communication systems.
- Ensure temporary lighting solutions meet safety standards and are compatible with any hazardous materials present.
- Conduct regular safety drills that simulate power outages to familiarize personnel with emergency procedures.