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Process monitoring and troubleshooting of a local refinery's

hydrogen plant using multivariate methods

Article  in  International Journal of Oil Gas and Coal Technology · January 2019

DOI: 10.1504/IJOGCT.2019.10024573

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346 Int. J. Oil, Gas and Coal Technology, Vol. 22, No. 3, 2019

Process monitoring and troubleshooting of a local

refinery’s hydrogen plant using multivariate methods

Mohamed Bin Shams*, Abdalrahman Abdulla,

Osama Khalaf and Saed Al-Tamimi
Department of Chemical Engineering,
University of Bahrain,
P.O. Box 32038, Isa Town, Kingdom of Bahrain
Fax: +973-(17)-680935
Email: mshams@uob.edu.bh
Email: aaaezat92@hotmail.com
Email: al_wasme_7@hotmail.com
Email: saed_tamimi@hotmail.com
*Corresponding author

Abstract: Modern refineries are equipped with distributed control systems

(DCS) for monitoring and regulation. These systems generate large amount of
process measurements which are acquired and stored in data historian. These
measurements are characterised by being cross-correlated, with low signal to
noise ratio and many missing observations in almost all variables.
Multivariate-based monitoring and troubleshooting techniques provides an
appropriate tool to address the aforementioned challenges. This paper
demonstrates the use of principle component analysis (PCA) as an analytics
tool for process monitoring and troubleshooting. A real case study from a local
refinery in Bahrain was used to prove the proficiency of PCA. To demonstrate
the ease and flexibility of the proposed scheme, all model buildings and testing
were done using specialised commercial software, namely Aspen ProMVTM
(AspenTech, 2018). The aim is to assist operators and engineers in refineries
and petrochemical plants to realise the advantages of multivariate methods for
troubleshooting plant and equipment upsets. The latter is necessary to assure
safe, reliable and profitable operation. [Received: November 9, 2017;
Accepted: May 9, 2018]
Keywords: multivariate analysis; principle component analysis; PCA;
contribution plots; hydrogen plant; troubleshooting; fault detection and
diagnosis; Aspen ProMV.
Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Bin Shams, M.,
Abdulla, A., Khalaf, O. and Al-Tamimi, S. (2019) ‘Process monitoring and
troubleshooting of a local refinery’s hydrogen plant using multivariate
methods’, Int. J. Oil, Gas and Coal Technology, Vol. 22, No. 3, pp.346–367.
Biographical notes: Mohamed Bin Shams is an Associate Professor of
Chemical Engineering at the University of Bahrain. He received his Bachelor in
Chemical Engineering from the University of Bahrain, his MSc in
Instrumentation and Analytical Science from the University of Manchester and
PhD in Chemical Engineering from the University of Waterloo, Canada. Prior
to joining the academia, he has worked for Yokogawa Middle East as a System
and Support Engineer. His research interests and publications fall into the
general area of process systems engineering and in particular in the application
of multivariate statistics and Big Data Analytics for fault detection, diagnosis
and optimisation.

Copyright © 2019 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.

 Process monitoring and troubleshooting of a local refinery’s hydrogen plant 347

Abdalrahman Abdulla holds a Bachelor’s of Science degree in Chemical

Engineering from University of Bahrain. He is currently working in Clariant
International Ltd; a specialty chemical company, as Technical Service Engineer
responsible of the Middle East and Africa region services.

Osama Khalaf earned his Bachelor’s in Chemical Engineering from the

University of Bahrain. He is currently a Trainee Engineer at Bahrain Petroleum
Company.

Saed Al-Tamimi earned his Bachelor’s in Chemical Engineering from the

University of Bahrain. He is currently a Trainee Engineer at Indo-Jordan
Chemicals Company Ltd., sulphuric and phosphoric acids producers.

1 Introduction

Operational excellence (OE) becomes a vital tool for ongoing improvement in modern
industrial plants (Davis et al., 2012). At the heart of this relatively new operation
philosophy is incident prevention. The use of statistical process control tools to monitor
and troubleshoot deviations from normal operating conditions aligns with OE objectives.
With the advancements of computer technologies, process monitoring has become much
easier and more efficient than any time before. In chemical process industry, huge
amount of data are collected and stored for different uses such as inspections, monitoring
and process improvement. Process monitoring, fault detection and diagnosis using
traditional statistical tools become more challenging when the number of process
variables is large and they are cross-correlated. This increase in the number of the
variables makes the use of normal/classical inspection approaches in fact inefficient.
Recently, principle component analysis (PCA) and partial least square (PLS) and their
variations have been used successfully for several industrial applications (Chiang et al.,
2001; Miletic et al., 2004). What make these multivariate techniques an attractive option
nowadays is the availability of commercial software that hides most of the sophisticated
mathematics associated with these techniques while providing the user with easy to build
and interpretation tools (MacGregor et al., 2015). The wide spectrum of process
characteristics has motivated the development different multivariate statistical monitoring
schemes such as static, dynamic, and adaptive monitoring and troubleshooting tools
(Bin Shams et al., 2011; Albazzaz and Wang, 2007; AlGhazzawi and Lennox, 2008; Yin
et al., 2002; Yuan and Wang, 2001). Bersimis et al. (2007) provided an overview of
common multivariate process monitoring techniques, e.g., MEWMA and MCUSUM.
Although Bersimis et al. (2007) presented a thorough overview of these techniques; they
seemed to have overlooked the applicability of applying such techniques to large
industrial processes characterised by large numbers of noisy process variables with many
missing observations. As a projection multivariate method, PCA finds hidden (or latent)
independent factors that are truly driving the observed process behaviour. Typically the
number of latent variables is small compared to the number of original variables
measured in the process, therefore, a more compact representation is provided by PCA
that facilitates the analysis of the underlying process. Latent variables are calculated by
linearly combining the original process variables that significantly contribute to the
overall process variations. For example it is common to have hundreds or more measured
348 M. Bin Shams et al.

variables (both on-line and from analytical and quality control laboratories). However,
only a small number of hidden variables drive the observed behaviour. This paper aims to
provide the necessary fundamentals and demonstrate, through commercially available
software, the proficiency of PCA based multivariate monitoring tools for fault detection
and troubleshooting with application to local refinery’s hydrogen plant. The latter is
achieved by:
1 introduce the underlying concepts and related mathematics through simple example
2 realise the benefits of PCA for monitoring and troubleshooting through a real case
study, namely, a hydrogen plant form a local refinery in Bahrain
3 emphasise the maturity of such techniques with regard to the availability of user
friendly commercial software such as Aspen ProMVTM (AspenTech, 2018).
The paper is organised as follows. In Section 2, definitions and theoretical background
related to PCA is presented. The details of implementing and interpreting PCA results are
demonstrated through simple example. To illustrate the applicability of PCA for
monitoring and troubleshooting in industrial setting, a real case study from a hydrogen
plant at a local refinery is presented in Section 3 followed by conclusions.

2 PCA for process monitoring and troubleshooting: preliminaries

Most the modern chemical and petrochemical are operated under closed loop control with
an intensive use of recycle and heat integration schemes. Process variables generated
from theses economically and optimally designed plants are auto-correlated and
cross-correlated. Most of the statistical methods, e.g., multiple linear regression (MLR) is
based on the assumption that variables are neither auto nor cross correlated which are
rarely satisfied in practice. Since the assumptions of perfect independence between
variables are rarely completely satisfied in practice, such traditional statistical models are
rarely used by process operation engineers. Cross-correlation problem can be solved by
using methods like principle components regression (PCR), PCA and PLS. A small set of
new variables also known as latent variables, that are truly driving the observed process
behaviour substitute the original variables. The idea behind PCA is to exploit the
cross-correlation between the process variables in order to have a simpler representation
of the process variation. The latter facilities the interpretation of the original variables so
that informative insights can be drawn. The first principal component captures most of
the variability in the dataset. The second principal component captures the variability that
are not accounted for by the first principal component and so on. The operational data,
usually collected from data historian, e.g., OSIsoft PI System, is stacked into a matrix of
size m by n where m is the number of observations and n is the number of variables. A set
of a smaller variables symbolised by ‘a’ is chosen where ‘a’ is less than ‘n’. The new ‘a’
variables contain most of the information hidden in the data matrix with regard of how
these variables are correlated. This can be done by determining the directions of the most
important variation in the data. A data matrix X is constructed by concatenating the
variables’ vectors, e.g., for three variables X = [x1 x 2 x3 ]. As shown in Figure 1,
 Process monitoring and troubleshooting of a local refinery’s hydrogen plant 349

although the data are three-dimensional, it can be seen that most of the variations in the
data can adequately be represented using only two-dimensions. The fact that three
variables variations can be adequately represented by two variables (or two principal
components) is what enables PCA to diminish the dimensionality of the original data. In
another word, PCA searches for new coordinate axis that explains the maximum
variations in the data. As shown in Figure 1, these two components are orthogonal and
commonly denote as T = [t1 t2].

Figure 1 Three variables are represented adequately using two principal components (see online
version for colours)

2.1 Pre-processing data

PCA based techniques are well known for being scale dependent. Therefore, and in order
to efficiently utilise this method for prediction or monitoring, data must be properly
scaled using data collected during ‘best practice’ operations. Typically, real industrial
data contains different sources of variations e.g. faulty measurements, faulty calibration,
inaccurate measuring instruments, missing data and data collected during different states
of normal operation. There are several methods that may be used to assess and select
good operating data from a process. By ‘good’ operating data we means the periods of
operations that represent best practice. The latter contains the common cause variations
(MacGregor et al., 2015) that multivariate based method such as PCA explains. Chiang
et al. (2003) reviewed several robust outlier detection algorithms to extract normal
operating data from plant historians. The algorithms were evaluated using the Tennessee
Eastman process (TEP) simulator. Among the considered algorithms, closest distance to
centre (CDC) method showed superior performance in extracting normal operating data
350 M. Bin Shams et al.

for building the PCA model. As indicated by the authors, the best performance was
obtained when CDC is combined with multivariate trimming MVT. In the same study,
the author suggested the use of robust and modified scaling rather than the standard
auto-scaling (i.e., deducting the mean and scaling by the inverse of standard deviation).
Robust scaling becomes especially important when multiple outliers are presented and
the mean is no longer accurate representative of the bulk of the data. Since CDC has been
used in the current study to extract normal operating data, it will be explained briefly. In
CDC, it is hypothesised that normal operating data is the data at which the process
remains steady as longer as possible. Therefore, CDC finds normal operating data by
calculating the distance of each observation, i.e., a single row of the X matrix, from the
centre (mean-vector of the data). The longer the period of operation at certain steady state
level, the more observations from this steady state level exist in the data matrix X and the
more influential they will have on the mean-vector of the data. Therefore, observations
belong to this period of operation will have smaller distances to the mean-vector. When
performing CDC, first the data matrix X is auto-scaled prior to calculating the distance of
each measurement vector from the data mean-vector. Either the Euclidean distance
(CDC2) or the maximum norm distance (CDCm) can be used to quantify the distance.
After ranking the data, the first half of the observations are the observation closest to the
centre of the data. MATLAB® has been used to perform CDC on historical data before
importing the data into Aspen ProMVTM (AspenTech, 2018). As mentioned earlier, when
extracting normal data and in the presence of multiple operating conditions and outliers,
robust scaling is highly recommend. When performing robust scaling, the median is used
in place of the mean and the median absolute deviation (MAD) from the median that is
defined as: sMAD = 1.4826 median{[ xi − xmedian ]}, where xmedian is the median of variable x
i
replaces the standard deviation. Once the normal condition data is identified, it is placed
in the X matrix.

2.2 PCA model and the monitoring statistics T2 and SPE

PCA transforms the matrix X = [x1 x2 x3 … xn] into a new data matrix T, where T = [t1 t2
t3 … ta]. Note that the T matrix has a number of rows equal to the number of row of the
X matrix, but different number of columns, i.e., smaller dimension (i.e., a < n). The T
matrix is defined as: T = XP, where T ∈ Rm×a, X ∈ Rm×n, P ∈ Rn×a. In another word, the
X matrix is decomposed as X = TPT + E. If n = a, then the E = 0. If a < n, E ≠ 0. The T2
a
ti2
statistics based on the first ‘a’ principal components is defined as T 2 = λ
i =1 i
where λi is
th 2
the eigenvalue for the i variable. In addition, confidence limits for T at significance
a (m − 1)
level α are related to the F distribution by Tm2, a = Fa , m − a . SPE can be estimated
m−a
as SPE = eTi ei where ei is the ith row of E matrix, that is, the part of xi observation that
has not been explained by the PCA model. The confidence limit for the SPE is given as:
 Process monitoring and troubleshooting of a local refinery’s hydrogen plant 351

1/ h0
 2Θ 2 Θ 2 h0 ( h0 − 1) 
SPEα = Θ1 1 + cα h0 + 
 Θ1 Θ12 
n
Θi =  λ ; for i = 1, 2, 3
j = a +1
i
j (1)

2Θ1Θ3
h0 = 1
3Θ 22

where cα is the percentage point at α significance level in a standard normal distribution.

There are few methods available to determine the number of components in PCA model,
some of which have been reviewed in Chiang et al. (2001). The most common approach
adopted in commercial software packages such as the one we used in this study, i.e.,
Aspen ProMVTM (AspenTech, 2018) is the cross validation. The goodness of fit criterion
in cross validation is commonly called prediction error sum of squares or PRESS. The
cross validation algorithm can be summarised as follows. Every element in the E matrix
may be represented as eij = xij − xˆij where i = 1 to m, and j = 1 to n. PRESS is defined as
m n
PRESS =  e . The X matrix is divided into q parts. One part is omitted, and the
i =1 j =1
2
ij

PCA model is built using the q – 1 parts. The model is then used to predict the omitted
data and the PRESS is re-calculated. The previous steps are repeated for the q parts using
‘a’ components. The PRESS (a) is then the sum of the PRESS of all qth part of a given ‘a’
components. If the PRESS (a) decreases significantly from PRESS (a – 1), then keep that
components otherwise stop adding components.

2.3 T2 and SPE-based contribution plots

Since T2 and SPE are compact multivariate statistics, that is, they cannot explicitly
indicate variables that are correlated to the occurred upset. If faults’ symptoms are
known, classification methods can used to precisely identify the responsible fault
(Bin Shams et al., 2011). The latter is usually difficult to be obtained though. A more
practical approach is to use contribution plots introduced by Miller et al. (1998).
Contribution plots are in particular useful for sensor and actuator related faults (Yoon and
MacGregor, 2001; Qin, 2003). Contribution plots depict the effect of each original
variable on the level of T2 and SPE. Therefore, contribution plots aids engineers and
operators to concentrate on few number of variables (Liu, 2014) rather than all the
monitored variables. Two types of contribution plots are usually used to highlight the
combination of variables that are contributed to the detected faults:
1 contribution plots related to T2 statistics
2 contribution plots related to SPE statistics.
352 M. Bin Shams et al.

For T2 statistic the contribution of variable j for (a < n) principal components at each
sampling instance i is given by (Bin Shams et al., 2011):
a  p2  n  1
n

2

 jk xij2 + 2 p jk
Cont ij =   λ
k =1  k
λk

 r =1
prk xir  xij + 


λk  r =1
prk xir 



(2)

  r≠ j   r≠ j  
where pjk and λk are the jk element of the loading matrix P and the kth eigenvalue,
respectively. The total contribution of variable j is summed over an operating-time
window. The first term in equation (2) includes the variable j while the second part
consists of cross product between variable j and the rest of the variables. The last part
does not contain xij. On the other hand, the total contribution of variable j to the SPE
statistic at each sampling instant i is given as:
Cont ij = eij2

The steps for process monitoring and troubleshooting using PCA is summarised in
Figure 3.

2.4 PCA for monitoring and troubleshooting: simple example

Prior to demonstrate the use of PCA for monitoring and troubleshooting, it worth to
justify the need for using two statistics instead of one. A simple process is shown in
Figure 2(a) and Figure 2(b). In this process, a single inlet stream enters to a process with
a flow rate given by x1 and a single outlet exists from the process with a flow rate of x2.
The unfilled circles on the 45º line indicate different levels of the normal operating
condition (i.e., common cause variations). This normal data is used to build the PCA
model. Assume that the outlet line starts to leak. The latter implies that the mass balance,
or in another word the correlation between the inlet and outlet flows is broken. This
condition is depicted by the filled blue circle (SPE). This type of failure can be detected
using the SPE monitoring chart. The second type of failure in Figure 2(b) is tagged T2.
This type of failure indicates that either flow rates or both exceed their corresponding
normal ranges, yet the cross-correlation between the variables is still preserved. To
illustrate the steps in Figure 3, the process given by Zhang et al. (1999) were used. 2,000
points were generated by simulating the system represented by equation (3) in
MATLAB®
u (k ) = 0.7u (k − 1) + w(k − 1)
z (k ) = 0.8 z (k − 1) + 0.3u (k − 1) (3)
p (k ) = 0.5 p (k − 1) + 0.2u (k − 1)

where w is white noise with unit variance. The 2,000 points that have been simulated to
calibrate the PCA model and represent the normal operating condition. Therefore, there is
no need to use the CDC here, since a single steady state is exist. Two components were
found adequate to capture the variations in the data using cross validation. Three types of
faults were applied (from 200 to 800) case (a): exceeding the limits, case (b): broken
correlation, case (c): exceeding limits and broken correlation.
 Process monitoring and troubleshooting of a local refinery’s hydrogen plant 353

Figure 2 (a) Process with two measured variables (b) x1 versus x2 (see online version for colours)

(a)

T2
T2 & SPE

SPE

(b)

2.4.1 Case (a): exceeding the limits

A mean shift of magnitude of one was applied simultaneously to the three variables,
while the cross-correlation is preserved. Figure 4(a) and Figure 4(b) show that only T2
responds to the occurred upset (from 200 to 800) while the SPE or Q statistic stays under
the threshold limit. Figure 5(a) and Figure 5(b) show that the three variables contributed
to the occurred upset. Interestingly, there is no contribution from the SPE chart.

2.4.2 Case (b): broken correlation

Three different mean shifts were added to the three variables (from 200 to 800) to
simulate the broken cross-correlation case. In particular, 0.05, 0.02 and 0.03 were added
to variables u, z and p, respectively. While the T2 statistic shows no unusual behaviour,
the SPE statistic exceeds the corresponding 99% confidence limit indicating that the
cross-correlation between the variables has been broken. No variables contributions were
shown in the T2-based contribution, but SPE-based contribution plot indicates that the
three variables are correlated with the occurred upset. The corresponding figures are not
shown here for breviary.

2.4.3 Case (c): exceeding limits and broken correlation

A shift mean of magnitude of one was added to the second variable from 200 to
800 points. Both statistics in Figure 6(a) and Figure 6(b) indicate the presence of the
upset. Both Figure 7(a) and Figure 7(b) shows that the second variable is the one mostly
contributed to the occurred upset.
354 M. Bin Shams et al.

Figure 3 Steps required to implement PCA for process monitoring and troubleshooting
(see online version for colours)
 Process monitoring and troubleshooting of a local refinery’s hydrogen plant 355

Figure 4 (a) T2 chart for case (a) (b) SPE chart for case (a) (see online version for colours)

(a)

(b)
356 M. Bin Shams et al.

Figure 5 (a) T2 contribution plot for case (a) (b) SPE contribution plot for case (a) (see online
version for colours)

(a)

(b)
 Process monitoring and troubleshooting of a local refinery’s hydrogen plant 357

Figure 6 (a) SPE chart for case (c) (b) SPE chart for case (c) (see online version for colours)

(a)

(b)
358 M. Bin Shams et al.

Figure 7 (a) T2 contribution for case (c) (b) SPE contribution for case (c) (see online version
for colours)

(a)

(b)

3 Hydrogen plant in a local refinery: an overview

Due to its significance for hydrotreating processes in refineries, hydrogen plant is one of
the most important units in the refinery. Nevertheless, the smooth and safe operation of
 Process monitoring and troubleshooting of a local refinery’s hydrogen plant 359

the hydrogen plant in the local refinery is critical since it is closely connected to the
operation of other plants, e.g., hydrocracking unit, sulphur recovery unit, lube base oil
plant and low sulphur diesel plant. Hydrogen plant produces hydrogen from natural gas.
The feed (Khuff gas) contains mainly methane gas (CH4) 80%, carbon dioxide (CO2) 6%,
nitrogen (N2) 11% and the rest is heavier hydrocarbons (C2-C6). The H2 plant is divided
into four sections: sulfinol, reformer, two converters and methanator. The main objective
of the sulfinol section is to remove organic sulphur compounds, CO2 and other impurities
such as H2S. First, the feed gas (Khuff) enters the plant at almost 1,150 psig and then
drops to 525 psig with the aid of giant valve. The feed gas enters the bottom of the
absorber column (sulfinol absorber column) while the regenerated sulfinol solvent is
introduced at the top. Sulfinol absorber removes almost all the sulphur compounds and
CO2 from the feed gas. Next, the gas effluent from the absorber enters the water-wash
column to wash the gas from the solvent and subsequently into two drums containing two
types of catalyst cobalt-molybdenum and zinc-oxide distributed in two beds. The catalyst
converts residual sulphur to H2S, which is adsorbed by the zinc-oxide bed. In the
reformer, the sweetened gas and the steam are passing through the tubes and the
hydrogen is produced by heating the mixture in presence of the catalyst to approximately
1,450ºF where the following overall reactions occur:
Heat and catalyst
CH 4(g) + H 2 O(g) ⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯ → CO (g) + 3H 2(g) [Endothermic]
Heat and catalyst
CO(g) + H 2 O(g) ⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯
→ CO 2(g) + H 2(g) [Exothermic]

The composition of the product mixture resulting from these two reactions is 70% H2,
10% CO2, 10% carbon monoxide (CO), 4% methane (CH4) and the rest are traces of
other gases. In the presence of steam and specialised catalysts, carbon mono-oxide CO is
further converted to CO2 using two reactors, namely, high temperature shift (HTS) and
low temperature shift (LTS) converters where the following reaction takes place:
Catalyst
CO(g) + H 2 O(g) ⎯⎯⎯⎯ → CO 2(g) + H 2(g) + Heat

Since it is relatively easier to get rid of carbon dioxide rather than carbon monoxide, CO
must be converted to CO2 before its removal in the carbonate solution section. The aim of
carbonate system section is to remove carbon dioxide (CO2) from the product stream.
Since the hydrogen is eventually routed to the hydrogen desulfurisation unit (HDU), it
must contain the least possible amount of CO and CO2. This is important to prevent
temperature runway in the reactor. In addition, the presence of CO and CO2 cause
unwanted side reactions. The latter is achieved in the methanator section where the small
amounts of carbon-oxides that have been not been absorbed in the carbonate section are
converted into methane. The methanator reactor has a nickel catalyst where the following
highly exothermic reactions occur:
Catalyst
CO (g) + 3H 2(g) ⎯⎯⎯⎯ → CH 4(g) + H 2 O (g) + Heat
Catalyst
CO 2(g) + H 2(g) ⎯⎯⎯⎯ → CO (g) + H 2 O (g) + Heat

After the methanator, the main content of the products stream is the hydrogen gas. The
hydrogen rich stream is routed through a fin-fan cooler; a heat exchanger and a knockout
360 M. Bin Shams et al.

drum to separate the condensate steam from the product stream. Then hydrogen stream is
then routed to the hydrogen desulphurisation unit.

3.1 Hydrogen plant monitoring and troubleshooting

First, normal operation data from the hydrogen plant were collected. 61 process variables
from the four sections were used to calibrate the PCA model. The three months history of
the 61 variables were collected from the OSIsoft PI historian with sampling frequency of
1 minute. The normal operation data contains common cause variations, that is, the
variations that are deemed acceptable from operation point of view, e.g., control valve
responses to set point changes or upsets. Fourteen principal components were adequate to
capture the common cause variations as indicated by cross validation in Aspen ProMVTM
(AspenTech, 2018). The calibrated PCA model was then used to monitor the 61 variables
used earlier for calibration. Figure 9(a) depicts the PCA-based T2 monitoring statistic for
the hydrogen plant. As can be seen, the T2 statistic exceeds the 99% confidence limit in
the duration (28/8/2012 15:33 to 17:51). As indicated earlier in the previous section, T2
violation of the confidence limits implies that some variables have exceeded their normal
variations limits. Similarly, Figure 9(b) shows that there is a breaking in correlation
between the variables in the same duration. Figure 10(a) indicates that there are set of
variables were deviated from their corresponding normal operating averages. In
particular, variables 64TI207, 64PDI43, 64PC11, 64PC12 and 64FI25 are most likely
correlated to the detected anomaly. Figure 10(b) shows that variable 64TI207 is the main
contributor to the violation in the SPE chart, that is, the occurred faults changes the
correlation between 64TI207 and the rest of the variables. The figure also shows that
there is a problem associated with tag 64FI25, that is the product effluent from the
knockout drum at the methanator section. In addition, noticeable deviations are
associated with tags 64PC11 and 64PC12, that is the upstream and downstream pressures
of the methanator sections.

Figure 8 The methantor section in the hydrogen plant (see online version for colours)

64HC109

Valve failure
(instrument air filter)
 Process monitoring and troubleshooting of a local refinery’s hydrogen plant 361

Figure 9 (a) T2 for the hydrogen plant (b) SPE for the hydrogen plant (see online version
for colours)

(a)

(b)
362 M. Bin Shams et al.

Figure 10 (a) Contribution plot for T2 monitoring chart of the hydrogen plant (b) Contribution
plot for SPE monitoring chart of the hydrogen plant (see online version for colours)

(a)
 Process monitoring and troubleshooting of a local refinery’s hydrogen plant 363

Figure 10 (a) Contribution plot for T2 monitoring chart of the hydrogen plant (b) Contribution
plot for SPE monitoring chart of the hydrogen plant (continued) (see online version
for colours)

(b)
364 M. Bin Shams et al.

Although 61 variables from the four sections of the hydrogen plant were used for
monitoring, the T2 and SPE based contribution plots make the troubleshooting activities,
that is, identifying variables most correlated to the occurred fault, an easier task. That is
to say, instead of looking at 61 variables to diagnose the detected abnormality, plant’s
operator can now focus on only limited number of variables. Therefore, and with the use
of operators’ operation knowledge, a prompt and informative troubleshooting can be
achieved. Aspen ProMVTM (AspenTech, 2018) software allows the operator to navigate
every variable with significant contribution by double clicking on the corresponding
variable. For example, we observed that the temperature before the methanator increased
rapidly to 600ºF, stay for some time, decreased to 400ºF and then returned to the normal
condition (524ºF). Similar deviation from normal operation levels were observed for
64PDI43, 64PC11, 64PC12, 64FI25 and 64FC21, not shown here for brevity. While most
of the variables are from the methanator section, 64FC21 belongs to the sulfinol section,
(see Table 1). Once the variables in Table 1 were identified, the results were discussed
with the plant personnel to validate the PCA monitoring and troubleshooting findings.
The problem was identified as failure in the methanator feed’s control valve (see
Figure 8). Specifically, the instrument air filter’s glass was broken and the instrument air
was vented. Consequently, no air was available to actuate the valve (64HC109). Since the
valve is air-to-open (fail-close), the control valve went to the safe closed position (~90%
close).
Following the valve malfunction, the following symptoms were observed. The
methanator feed temperature (64TI207) deviated from 521ºF to 600ºF. This can be
understood by considering Figure 8. That is, the heat exchanger used to heat up the feed
to the methanator was affected by the valve failure. That is, following the valve failure,
the cold feed stream was trapped in the methanator feed line, and continuously heated up
by the hot effluent form the HTS convertor. The latter cause 64TI207 to increase. In
addition, the pressure downstream the methanator (64PC12) decreased sharply from
320 to 110 psig (see Figure 8) due to the decrease in the effluent from the methanator.
The flow indicator for the outlet from the methanator (64FI25) also decreased for the
same reason. Before the heat exchanger, the pressure was very high (64PC11) and the
relieve valve opened to atmosphere to prevent the unit from damage. This was clearly
shown by looking at the temperature time series where the temperature started to reduce
after a sharp increase. The supervisor also mentioned that the methanator’s valve failure
not only affected the methanator section, but also the sulfinol section. The solvent inlet
flow to the sulfinol absorber (64FC21) decreased and was not able to enter to the column
due to the increase in pressure inside the column.
Table 1 Discerption of the variables contributed to the valve failure problem in Figure 10

Variables (tags) Description

64TI207 Methanator feed temperature
64PDI43 PD across the methanator
64PC12 Effluent pressure from the knockout drum (to hydrocracker)
64FI25 Effluent pressure from the knockout drum
64FC21 Solvent flow in the absorber
 Process monitoring and troubleshooting of a local refinery’s hydrogen plant 365

As can be seen, the process behaviour after the occurred valve failure was very close to
what PCA based T2, SPE and contribution plots highlighted. Interestingly, while most of
the variable correlated with the valve failure are physically located at the methanator
section, the multivariate correlative feature of PCA made it possible to identify other
variables that are physically apart from the problem, yet correlated with the rest of the
variables. Although the simultaneous occurrence of faults has not been considered in the
current work, it is worth to mention here that the detection statistics used in the current
study, e.g., T2 and SPE are equally applicable to the simultaneous case and they will
trigger an alarm whenever an anomaly is observed. However, contribution plot
effectiveness is limited to simple faults, e.g., sensor and actuator, such as the type of fault
detected in the current work. That is, it is not sufficient to accurately isolate faults with
contribution plots when the measured variables behave similarly during the occurrence of
different faults or when simultaneous faults occurred. In the latter, a faults library form
the data historian is required to precisely isolate the occurred problem (Bin Shams et al.,
2011).

3.2 Economic benefits of applying multivariate methods for hydrogen plant

Multivariate monitoring and troubleshooting techniques can help in improving the
economics of a plant by early detecting, rectifying and preventing propagation of faults.
Early detection will reduce plant downtime and associated costs, e.g., operators’ overtime
due to shut down and start up, subcontractors’ expenses, etc. There are also costs
associated with exposing equipment to abnormal conditions for a long time. The latter
may reduce the life cycle of the unit operations and equipment. As mentioned earlier,
hydrogen plant is one of the most important units in refineries. Therefore, faults
associated with hydrogen plant can reduce the production of all related plants and even a
small problem, if not promptly detected and identified, may cause severe losses. By way
of illustration, HDU unit produces diesel (70,000 barrel/day) and elemental sulphur
(200 SCDFH). When this problem happened, HDU throughput decreased to 45% [see
Figure 11(a)] and therefore approximately 200,000.0 USD (1.93 dollar per gallon) were
lost in the two hours fault duration [see Figure 11(b)].

Figure 11 (a) Production before (1) and after (2) the fault (b) Savings: early (1) versus
delayed (2) detections (see online version for colours)

(a) (b)
366 M. Bin Shams et al.

In addition to the economic impact of undetected faults in hydrogen plant, there is an

equally important environment impact. When the valve failure occurred and due to the
increase in pressures, different relieve valves were opened and gases emitted to
atmosphere. The emitted gas contains mainly methane, others hydrocarbons and acidic
gases (H2S and CO2). So, the beneficial of applying an automated monitoring and
troubleshooting platform is clearly realised. Recently, AspenTech (2018) has released an
online version of the offline desktop version Aspen ProMVTM used in this study. We
believe that more benefits can be realised when online solution is used especially for
continuous based processes such as refineries. Finally, it worth to mention that
appropriate applications of such diagnostic tools is highly lucrative.

4 Conclusions

The premise and preliminaries of using PCA-based tools for fault detection and diagnosis
has been introduced using simple example. The proficiency of PCA for monitoring and
troubleshooting faults is further demonstrated through a local refinery’s hydrogen plant.
PCA is especially powerful when large numbers of correlated variables are encountered,
which is a characteristic of most chemical process industries. While automated
monitoring and troubleshooting tools are vital for modern industries, it is by no mean a
replacement of a well-trained plant engineer. Maximum benefits can be realised when
multivariate statistics based tools are used along with process knowledge. However, it is
still useful to use multivariate statistics alone, especially when an operator has little
troubleshooting experience. The implementation of such useful tools becomes easy and
quick especially with the availability of commercial software such as Aspen ProMVTM
(AspenTech, 2018). Economic and environment benefits associated with applying
multivariate statistics such as PCA for monitoring and troubleshooting justify its use.

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