A USA Mountain Area energy company supplies gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel to the Utah, Nevada, and Idaho states engaged Trindent Consulting to create and develop an industry leading gasoline blending program and reduce octane and volatility quality giveaway.
How we Made it Happen™
Planning and Scheduling Improvement
- Developed and implemented a component tank properties calculation tool in Power BI by integrating tank and rundown sample results, resulting in a reduction of 0.10-0.15 ON and 0.05-0.10 psi in giveaway, and achieving $2,020,000 in savings.
- Created E10 uplift models and integrated them into the blend recipes file to predict post-ethanol blend octane values, enabling more aggressive neat targets setting and leading to savings equivalent to $1,860,000.
Measurement Excellence
- Developed and Installed an SOP (Standard Operating Procedure) for the Ethanol hand blend sample preparation process, resulting in a reduction of ON measurement uncertainty by 0.03 and achieving savings of $221,000 in ON giveaway.
- Improved the process of selecting calibration and validation data sets for the online Raman analyzer and implemented an SQC program to prompt timely maintenance/modeling, resulting in ON and volatility giveaway reduction equivalent to $1,225,000.
Operations Excellence
- Standardized blend start-up/shut-down with SOP and installed a communication platform using SharePoint to enable timely data exchange between Operations and Lab, which led to a reduction in blend execution variability and the overall quality giveaway, resulting in savings of $924,000.
- Improved the existing sampling SOP to be consistent with ASTM D5842, addressing the inconsistency in sampling practices and potential loss of light ends, resulting in savings of $595,000.
“Trindent helped us establish performance management tools in key areas of our operations and helped facilitate conversations to resolve any KPI’s that are out of tolerance. There has been a positive change in our mindset and best practices to improve refinery planning and blending operations that are part of our day-to-day operations.”