Conceptualization of smart solutions in oil and gas industry

Technological solutions called “smart wells” and “smart fields” have been applied in petroleum industry for nearly two decades. They aim to improve the knowledge of petroleum production processes, and thereby improve the efficiency of operations. Researchers and companies in pursuit of their goals tend to use one-sided implications and numerous synonyms when describing the substance of the term, which leads to an occasional confusion. In order to study the concept of smart field from a general perspective, a literature review has been conducted, and main characteristic attributes of such solutions have been revealed. Selected marketed products offered by engineering companies have been analyzed as examples of the technology implementations. A definition has been proposed along with its practical implications for the companies management. Additionally, an attempt has been made to place these solutions in a broad scientific context of intelligence and sustainability in contemporary business processes.publishedVersio

Modelling and design of safety instrumented systems for upstream processes of petroleum sector

The adequacy of the decision-making regarding the specification of Safety Instrumented Systems (SIS) deployed for hazardous processes, contributes to avoiding incidents and corresponding losses. This paper proposes an approach to mathematically and economically substantiated design of SIS. Markov analysis is used for the stochastic process of SIS failures and technological incidents occurrence. The model is used further for multi-objective optimization of SIS design. The research is relevant to engineering departments and contractors, who specialise in planning and designing the technological solution.publishedVersio

Employee scheduling and maintenance planning for safety systems at the remotely located oil and gas industrial facilities

The safety of operations is vital in any process in the oil and gas sector, especially given that increasingly more hydrocarbon reserves are discovered in non-conventional remote and Arctic locations. Safety systems are designed as a part of a complex IT system for process control. The design of these systems is conducted in the form of an engineering project. This research presents a decision-making framework to facilitate formulating clear and comprehensive recommendations for the requirements specification developed for the safety systems. The contribution of this research to the strategic planning area of IT solutions for hazardous industrial facilities is integrating the problems of designing a safety system, planning its maintenance, and scheduling the employees to conduct the required maintenance. With this joint decision-making, it is possible to explore trade-offs between investments into the systems’ complexity and workforce-related expenditures throughout the solution’s lifecycle. The reliability modelling is conducted with the help of Markov analysis. The multi-objective decision-making framework is employed to deduce straightforward requirements to the safety system design, maintenance strategy, and workforce organisation. This research is relevant to managing the petroleum sector engineering projects with regard to the design of technological solutions.publishedVersio

Cooking oil and fat waste management : a review of the current state

Waste management is a continuously growing area connecting industry and academia nowadays. There are, however, still many issues and sub-areas requiring in-depth analysis and development of new approaches and solutions. One of them is the management of waste cooking oils and fats originated from households. While most of the solid waste is addressed within the circular economy proposal, the fat waste recycling consideration is still in its early stage, as the relevant European Union legislation has only recently been adopted. Disposing of oil and fat waste in a traditional way often leads to sewage problems. However, if utilised, this waste may be a valuable source of energy and material recovery. While maintaining the reverse supply chain viewpoint (from waste producers through the collection to treatment and utilisation), this paper reviews the current state of the waste cooking oils and fats management and identifies the drawbacks in existing collection and handling methods. The review shows that current approaches have shortcoming mainly due to poorly organised collection container networks and provides insights into the importance of effective prognosis of the cooking oil and fat waste whose collection and handling is still in the development. The Czech Republic current state and the future outlook is discussed and commented with regards to the expected growth of production and separation of these wastes. The review stresses the challenges of establishing and coordinating the supply chain segments, which will benefit from applying mathematical modelling to facilitate decision-making.publishedVersio

Cooking oil and fat waste management: A review of the current state

Waste management is a continuously growing area connecting industry and academia nowadays. There are, however, still many issues and sub-areas requiring in-depth analysis and development of new approaches and solutions. One of them is the management of waste cooking oils and fats originated from households. While most of the solid waste is addressed within the circular economy proposal, the fat waste recycling consideration is still in its early stage, as the relevant European Union legislation has only recently been adopted. Disposing of oil and fat waste in a traditional way often leads to sewage problems. However, if utilised, this waste may be a valuable source of energy and material recovery. While maintaining the reverse supply chain viewpoint (from waste producers through the collection to treatment and utilisation), this paper reviews the current state of the waste cooking oils and fats management and identifies the drawbacks in existing collection and handling methods. The review shows that current approaches have shortcoming mainly due to poorly organised collection container networks and provides insights into the importance of effective prognosis of the cooking oil and fat waste whose collection and handling is still in the development. The Czech Republic current state and the future outlook is discussed and commented with regards to the expected growth of production and separation of these wastes. The review stresses the challenges of establishing and coordinating the supply chain segments, which will benefit from applying mathematical modelling to facilitate decision-making. © 2020, AIDIC Servizi S.r.l

Optimization of Safety Instrumented System Design and Maintenance Frequency for Oil and Gas Industry Processes

Oil and gas industry processes are associated with significant expenditures and risks. Adequacy of the decisions on safety measures made during early stages of planning the facilities and processes contributes to avoiding technological incidents and corresponding losses. Formulating straightforward requirements for safety instrumented systems that are followed further during the detailed engineering design and operations is proposed, and a mathematical model for safety system design is introduced in a generalized form. The model aims to reflect the divergent perspectives of the main parties involved in oil and gas projects, and, therefore, it is formulated as a multi-objective problem. Application of black box optimization is suggested for solving real-life problem instances. A Markov model is applied to account for device failures, technological incidents, continuous restorations and periodic maintenance for a given process and safety system configuration. This research is relevant to engineering departments and contractors, who specialize in planning and designing the technological solution

Employee scheduling and maintenance planning for safety systems at the remotely located oil and gas industrial facilities

The safety of operations is vital in any process in the oil and gas sector, especially given that increasingly more hydrocarbon reserves are discovered in non-conventional remote and Arctic locations. Safety systems are designed as a part of a complex IT system for process control. The design of these systems is conducted in the form of an engineering project. This research presents a decision-making framework to facilitate formulating clear and comprehensive recommendations for the requirements specification developed for the safety systems. The contribution of this research to the strategic planning area of IT solutions for hazardous industrial facilities is integrating the problems of designing a safety system, planning its maintenance, and scheduling the employees to conduct the required maintenance. With this joint decision-making, it is possible to explore trade-offs between investments into the systems’ complexity and workforce-related expenditures throughout the solution’s lifecycle. The reliability modelling is conducted with the help of Markov analysis. The multi-objective decision-making framework is employed to deduce straightforward requirements to the safety system design, maintenance strategy, and workforce organisation. This research is relevant to managing the petroleum sector engineering projects with regard to the design of technological solutions

Safety systems for the oil and gas industrial facilities : design, maintenance policy choice, and crew scheduling

The technology of oil and gas production is associated with significant hazards. Safety Instrumented Systems (SIS) are designed to ensure proper and safe operations in this sector. This research presents a framework that produces reasonable recommendations (requirements specification) for the SIS design and maintenance with consideration of the three key perspectives relevant to any petroleum engineering project, namely those of facility operators, engineering contractors, and the authorities. The contribution of this research to the area of engineering design is simultaneously addressing the decisions on the SIS design, organization of its maintenance, and employee scheduling for the remotely-located hazardous industrial facilities. These decisions are made based on the choice of maintenance policies incorporated into a Markov model of the system functioning. Another contribution of this research to the reliability modeling area is incorporating diverse redundancy into the modeling and decision-making framework. Thus, this research explores a trade-off between the capital investments into the SIS’s design complexity and the operational expenditures associated with system maintenance and expected losses due to potential hazards. The developed multi-objective decision-making framework requires a black-box optimization approach to produce results. This research is relevant to engineering departments and contractors specializing in designing technological solutions for the petroleum sector.publishedVersio

Cooking oils and fat waste collection infrastructure planning: a regional-level outline

Among the current trends in waste management and circular economy is the involvement of new fractions of waste for sorting and collection. One of them is fats and cooking oils, especially those coming from households. Now, the nascent fat waste recycling becomes promoted as regulations and waste recovery targets have been set in the European Union. The traditional manner of discarding household fat waste usually causes sewage problems. However, utilisation of this waste brings the potential for contributing to the energy supply and material recovery. This research presents a mathematical model for the optimal location of fat waste bins and containers in the given municipalities. The container network should comprise as few containers as possible, while the walking distance for the citizens towards the container is as short as possible. The objective of the proposed optimisation model is to minimise the total number of collection points (infrastructure cost). The collection points represent the citizens’ addresses in a municipality. The average walking distance towards a container is a novel feature in the model, which is pertinent to waste fractions with low production per person. Cluster analysis describes the variability between municipalities, and further, it is possible to use regression analysis to model the number of containers for any municipality or region. The proposed general decision support tool estimates the total cost and number of bins needed for any region or a country. The region from the Czech Republic, which was used as a study area, revealed the requirement for 609 containers, with only EUR 30,000 of investment cost. There are around 950 inhabitants assigned to a single collection point on average. Graphic abstract: [Figure not available: see fulltext.]. © 2021, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.[GA 20-00091Y]; [CZ.02.1.01/0.0/0.0/15_003/0000456]; [CZ.02.1.01/0.0/0.0/16026/0008392]CZ.02.1.01/0.0/0.0/15_003/0000456; European Commission, EC: CZ.02.1.01/0.0/0.0/16026/0008392; Ministerstvo Školství, Mládeže a Tělovýchovy, MŠMT; Grantová Agentura České Republiky, GA Č