One of the roles that I have inherited from my predecesor is a daily and monthly monitoring of how the plant is performing against a set of operational criteria. The digital way in which modern plants are monitored and controlled provides enormous benefits to the old analogue days, one of the largest being that personnel who operate the boards in the control room can see how the plant is behaving in real time.
As with all processes there are optimum conditions that provide an envelope for which to operate inside. These envelopes mean that the plant can run reliably without causing issues to individual unit operations, or subsequent issues to processes located up- or downstream of our site.
A way of managing this is to look at which envelope limits have been exceeded on a daily basis, and investigating for how long the excursion occured, to what degree, what caused it, what were the consequences, what was done to remedy it, et cetera.
By looking at these sort of issues a historical database is created for the operational issues of the site, both from quite normal events (i.e. a compressor trips) to less regular events (i.e. an offshore injection of chemicals which impacts on the gas molecular sieve driers). At the end of every month I look at the most severe in terms of those which reduce our availability to process and export hydrocarbons, to those which could have the potential to cause mechanical integrity issues, for instance.
By investigating the operation of a plant in such away allows the operators and engineers to be pro-active in their approach and expect issues before they occur. This is just another safety measure to prevent incidents from occuring and one which a process engineer plays a vital role.
I'm now nearly 2 months into the new life - doesn't time fly by! Since I began my day to day responsibilities and role have altered very little; what is changing is the types of work that I am now getting involved in. One avenue of these is known as
plant modifications.
The plant mod procedure addresses the dynamic nature of the oil and gas terminal that I work on. Over years of use equipment may be rendered redundant and so may need to be removed - a process requiring changing the P&ID (piping and instrumentation diagram). Other situations leading to this could be, for instance, an optimisation or de-bottlenecking study that shows how some equipment is needed/not needed, should be operated using a different philosophy, should be linked to other bits of process equipment that it is not currently, et cetera. My job remit is now beginning to cover these aspects.
As a process engineer my job is to co-ordinate with other engineers and operators to ascertain the best way of modifying the plant so that is runs more efficiently, is safe and reliable. An example of a plant mod that I am currently working on is seeing how an old steam-condensate system used for steam-tracing instruments in the colder months can be re-routed due to the age of the system which in later years could affect it's integrity. This ultimately means I will be having a first-hand influence in changing the way the process looks and is operated.
This is the great thing about doing a degree like Chemical Engineering. From day one in the real world you are given jobs with real responsibility and accountability. This is something which all new graduates should clasp ahold of as it is a vital part to their professional development.
