Distillation Column Availability: Conceptual Analysis

The reliability/availability  of distillation operations in Refineries and Chemical Plants is a very impactful parameter in the economics of such businesses.  They also often also have HSSE and integrity implications.  Availability can be viewed from the asset integrity  and hardware point of view using statistical reliability models (mean time to failure) but a more proactive approach to monitoring can provide real time availability predictions.  This proactive monitoring needs to be based on accurate models that convert process conditions to historical effects on the hardware.  This paper will discuss a conceptual approach to monitor the health of a distillation system by tracking the process history.