AL WAHA Petrochemicals Co., a joint venture of Sahara Petrochemicals Co. 75% and Basell Arable lnvestissements SAS 25%, has let a contract to Honeywell International Inc. subsidiary Honeywell UOP LLC, Des Plaines, Ill., to provide a suite of cloud-based technology and interactive support services aimed at helping to explore possibilities for maximizing propylene production at its plant in Al Jubail Industrial City, in Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province.
As part of the contract, UOP will implement its proprietary Connected Performance Services (CPS) technology, a cloud-based service that will integrate portions of the plant’s specific process data with UOP’s history of operating experience to predict potential operational issues and deliver AL WAHA real-time, actionable recommendations and solutions to ensure the plant runs at peak efficiency with the highest reliability, UOP said.
Specifically, AL WAHA will use CPS’ Process Reliability Advisor (PRA) tool to continuously analyze operation of the plant’s Oleflex unit, which is equipped to produce 467,600 tonnes/year of propylene as primary feedstock for the production of 450,000 tpy of polypropylene (OGJ Online, June 14, 2016).
In addition to delivering detailed analysis of unit operations, the PRA tool will provide AL WAHA with corrective recommendations to prevent future production interruptions and improve performance, all of which will further the operator’s objective of maximizing the unit’s on-stream reliability while simultaneously optimizing its consumption of propane, the service provider said.
UOP disclosed neither a value of the contract nor a timeline for the technology implementation.
Contact Robert Brelsford at [email protected].
