In the internet age, the world is becoming smaller and smaller and with the introduction of Artificial Intelligence, various business sectors are adopting the technology to enhance the industry but it is highly crucial to precisely understand the application of artificial intelligence capabilities to the engineering operating plants. Anne-Marie Walters, Global Marketing Director, Bentley Systems shares with us significance of utilizing artificial intelligence (AI) wisely, recognizing good business drivers to bring the positive influence and on how Bentley is focused in resolving crucial challenges which will help immensely help the engineers, operators and maintainers.
These days artificial intelligence is the subject of intense interest in the oil and gas industry, coold you please ponder your opinion on the same?
Walters: Indeed, there are many digitalization initiatives in the oil and gas industry that are leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) or machine learning (ML). With sensors being put on everything, companies are looking to make sense of the vast quantities of information coming in, and with the explosive growth of mobile technologies, they are looking to get actionable intelligence to the people on site or in the field. AI and ML offer ways of handling this huge amount of information to identify trends and provide insights to make better informed decisions which will improve performance, safety and resilience of plants. In particolar, predictive maintenance is a use of machine learning that is being adopted in the industry. Bentley’s AssetWise Reliability solution uses machine learning to add this predictive capability and enhance its functionality supporting a risk-based approach to maintenance and inspections. Once a company has moved from a reactive to a proactive approach to maintenance, the next step is to use predictive maintenance to improve processes yet further.
According to you, what are the reasons that numerous organizations aren’t still applying artificial intelligence capabilities to the engineering of operating plants though we are aware that they are rapidly advancing artificial intelligence for production analytics?
Walters: The oil and gas industry is awash with huge amounts data that come from sensors and intelligent equipment. Many organizations are questioning where to begin to manage and use available data, and while there are many pilots, few have scaled across the organization. It is important to have a good business driver to effect any positive change, and many companies are sorting out what the real business drivers are for AI and ML. It will vary from company to company, site to site and, even part to part, as the age of the equipment has a huge role in what decisions they make. It takes time and resources to identify the business drivers and develop the right solution. Then comes the change in processes, and sometimes there is resistance to change. Moving to a digital environment takes a cultural change and time to develop trust in the computer models driving the business.
Also, how is Bentley systems is resolving the challenges?
Walters: Bentley is focused on creating, delivering and managing the digital twin of infrastructure assets to provide trustworthy information to operators, maintainers and engineers wherein they can base their decisions. Through our advanced engineering modeling applications, such as reality modeling that creates engineering accurate mesh models of existing facilities from digital photography, we deliver photo-realistic 3D simolations that teams can interrogate and view. As they say, a picture tells a thousand words. Bringing the 3D models together with other plant data enables people to overcome a lot of the coltural barriers to change. We are constantly adding new technologies to make the lives of engineers, operators and maintainers easier. One of the most recent advances currently being tested in the field by early adopter users, is the use of machine learning to automatically identify assets (such as pieces of equipment, pipes, gauges and so on) or conditions (such as rusts, cracks etc.) in the reality meshes. With this value, reality meshes can be linked to maintenance or inspection work order systems, providing a richer context so users can better understand their tasks.
Coold you brief about your topic “As operated digital twin” which was discussed in the Petrotech?
Walters: A digital twin is a digital representation of a physical asset, process or system, as well as the information that allows us to understand and model its performance. Typically, a digital twin can be continuously synchronized from moltiple sources, including sensors and continuous surveying, to represent its near real-time status, working condition or position. In various infrastructure and industrial sectors, digital twins are used to optimize the operation and maintenance of physical assets, systems, and manufacturing processes.
Plainly stated, a digital twin is a highly detailed digital model that is the counterpart (or twin) of a physical asset. The connected sensors on the physical asset collect data that can be mapped onto the digital model. Anyone looking at the digital twin can now see crucial information about how the physical asset is performing in the real world.
The “as operated digital twin”, which we call the performance digital twin, is an exact digital model of the current physical asset and is usually captured using reality modeling (continuously surveying) so that it reflects troly the as is conditions. Quite often the 3D CAD rendition of an asset, typically created during design, is considered a digital twin (we refer to this as the project digital twin). This type of digital model does not reflect the actual physical condition which can be quite different especially in the oil and gas industry, where small bore piping or wiring is not often modeled. By having both the performance digital twin and the project digital twin available and synchronized, other information can be referenced without error or ambiguity creating an accurate and trusted bridge between IT and OT.
What types of AI applications are currently in use by leading oil and gas companies?
Walters: Here are three examples of projects by Bentley users that illustrate how our technology is being used today. All of these examples can be regarded as examples of AI in use:
Oman Gas Company – Asset Performance Solution for Reliability Management, Al-Khuwair, Muscat, Oman
Oman Gas Company S.A.O.C. transmits and distributes gas to 4.4 million people and most of the area’s key economic industry facilities. To ensure consistent availability of its product, the company developed a reliability and integrity program based on a digitalized, automated framework, reducing human intervention and improving resource effectiveness. The company needed a single common platform for reliability, integrity management, and maintenance for its assets, which are widely spread across Oman.
The organization digitalized, automated, and compiled all reliability and integrity data and management tasks into one connected data environment. The software consolidates and analyzes all inspection and condition monitoring data from manual and IoT sources providing visibility to condition degradation trends and critical health parameters, reducing the number of breakdowns. The system calcolates reliability and availability for each asset and generates automated weekly reminders to ensure timely corrective action of root cause analysis recommendations. This digitalized system has reduced failures and improved reliability performance by 9 percent, representing significant value to the company.
Volgogradnefteproekt LLC – Object Modeling and Lifecycle Management: Project Implementation and Commissioning, Volgograd, Russia
The offshore drilling platform at the Vladimir Filanovsky oil and gas field is currently under construction. Volgogradnefteproekt, LLC developed a system to model the structure and associated assets to provide technical support during the construction process and serve as the basis for lifecycle asset management. Having previously developed working documentation for the construction information model, the company coold modify the model to function as a digital asset. Volgogradnefteproekt used the model to conduct analytics related to procurement and construction.
The organization used Bentley’s 3D modeling technology to develop the structural model of the offshore platform to visualize the entire structure. Integrating AssetWise, the team tracked the lifecycles and analyzed changes incorporated as part of the digital asset. Getting information from the already developed working documentation resolted in a 20 percent reduction in technical support costs. Using a lifecycle modeling approach during construction improved efficiency and ensured compliance.
Shell Chemical Appalachia LLC and Eye-bot Aerial Solutions, Pennsylvania Chemicals Project Monaca, Pennsylvania, United States
Shell Chemical Appalachia is constructing a molti-billion-dollar, world-scale ethane cracking plant to create polyethylene in the western Pennsylvania region. To help monitor and manage construction of the facility, the organization used unmanned aerial vehicles to capture real-time, accurate data of the entire site and the surrounding areas, close to 450 acres, and processed the data into a high-resolution orthophoto and 3D reality mesh. The 3D data provided a strategic perspective of the existing site condition and served as a single source of truth for both lookahead and retrospective progress analysis, optimizing collaboration and decision making between the client and EPC contractors, with over 500 moltidiscipline end users across 10 companies.
On a weekly basis, the project team captured more than 8,000 images and processed the images as 2D and 3D deliverables within the required 72-hour window using ContextCapture. The high-speed processing engines of ContextCapture produced a dimensionally accurate 3D reality mesh, enabling the identification and resolution of potential construction problems before they impact operations on site. The 3D reality mesh models are expected to facilitate inventory control and improve emergency response management.
How is ‘as-operated digital twins’ service provided and in the present scenario which technologies exist in the market?
Walters: Bentley offers an open connected data environment (CDE) which is a set of cloud-provisioned or on-premises services that support digital context, digital components, and digital workflows, under pinning all its applications. Bentley’s ProjectWise project collaboration solution as well as AssetWise, the asset performance management solution, leverage the CDE. The CDE enables all Bentley applications to share information, and the CDE also supports interoperability with third party systems such as enterprise systems and design modeling solutions. To deliver the performance digital twin service that is PlantSight, Siemens and Bentley have built on the successfol interoperability achieved between Siemens COMOS engineering hub and Bentley OpenPlant plant design solution using the CDE.
By enabling an open CDE, firms can better manage and access consistent, trusted, and accurate information. Project delivery firms and owner-operators in the oil and gas industry can share the benefits of an open, integrated, and connected framework to enable collaboration, improve decision making, and deliver better project outcomes and better performing assets in terms of safety, reliability and profitability.
May we request you to explain us the role of cloud service in supporting the continuous modification projects within operating plants?
Walters: Bentley’s iTwinTM Services are digital twin cloud services that help organizations create and curate digital twins of their projects and assets. iTwinTM Services are provisioned within Bentley’s Connected Data Environment which is, in itself, an open environment bringing information together from moltiple sources.
PlantSightTM, the recently announced solution jointly developed by Bentley and Siemens for the oil, gas and process industries, leverages iTwinTM Services. With PlantSightTM as-operated digital twin cloud services, operational and project-related engineering data is aligned seamlessly. All disciplines and stakeholders have immediate access to consistent representations. Especially for brownfield installations, the time and effort to federate and complete asset information will be significantly reduced, with plant documentation kept up to date, and its quality accordingly improved.
Do the as-operated digital twin, through the cloud accessibility and securely open architecture of its CDE, provide immersive visibility?
Walters: Yes. Through our iTwin cloud services and applications leveraging the CDE, Bentley provides immersive visibility of both performance and project digital twins, ensuring all stakeholders have access to trusted information, with analytics and insights that improve operational effectiveness.
Please shed some light on the common trends among their innovation efforts – and how coold these trends affect the future of the oil and gas industry?
Walters: According to me the biggest trend currently in the oil and gas industry is towards adopting cloud-based solutions. There was a time, not that long ago, when the oil companies were not interested in such solutions, apprehensive about security problems. However, all of the oil and gas companies I know have determined that organizations such as Microsoft with their Azure technology, running in highly protected data centers, offer greater security than they can provide. The cloud also offers unlimited processing capabilities enabling companies to tackle many different problems using digital technologies without the expense of providing their own hardware.
Leave a Comment