Venture
into the world of industrial turbomachinery and oil and gas solutions
Issue 11 | May 2009
Focus
Wastewater — a suitable case for treatment
Monitor
The Mega Test Center, revisited
Spotlight
New ‘VOIS’ for South Korea’s oil and gas giant
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Dear Reader,
From our home base in Duisburg, Germany, and the Mega Test Center — the spawning ground of the turbomachinery at the heart of our equipment solutions for the
industrial, power generation and oil and gas markets of the world — we follow the
tracks of some recent deliveries to a number of different continents and equally
varying applications. From the glaciers of Patagonia, and the coastline of Peru in South
America, via Hamlet’s historic haunts at Elsinore (Helsingør) in Denmark and associated projects in Spain, we travel to the industrial ports of South-East Asia, homing
in on South Korea.
And on the way we provide some glimpses into the variety of solutions that the
Oil and Gas Division of Siemens Energy covers, from the niche market of wastewater
treatment by a relative newcomer to our family, via our bread-and-butter turbomachinery, to an eye-opening innovative overview of asset management, (the ‘Google
Earth’ of control systems) supplied from our base in Singapore.
Join us on the trip!
Tom Blades, President
Siemens Energy Sector, Oil & Gas Division
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Inside
Inside
10
06
04 News flash Around the world
Testing fuel flexibility of industrial gas turbines, and projects in Peru and
Argentinean Patagonia.
06 Focus Wastewater — a suitable case for treatment
Siemens Turbomachinery Equipment A/S in Helsingør, Denmark, helps
the industry to raise the efficiency of wastewater treatment, improving
effluent quality and the financial health of utilities.
10 Monitor The Duisburg Mega Test Center, revisited
A year after its inauguration, the Mega Test Center buzzes with life.
12Faces The road ahead
An interview with Tom Blades, new President and CEO of Oil & Gas
Division of Siemens Energy.
16
16Spotlight New ‘VOIS’ for South Korea’s oil and gas giant
The new Visualized Operations Intelligence System (VOIS) has already
proved so successful that SK Energy is looking to extend the system to
its other business units.
Cover photo: Kronborg Castle, immortalized as Elsinore by William Shakespeare's ‘Hamlet’, and the
immediate neighborhood of Siemens Turbomachinery Equipment A/S, Denmark.
Imprint
Publisher: Siemens AG, Energy Sector, Oil & Gas, Wolfgang-Reuter-Platz, 47053 Duisburg, Germany Responsible: Dr. Uwe Schütz Editorial team: Lynne Anderson (Head),
Manfred Wegner Contact: lynne.anderson@siemens.com Contributing editor: Colin Ashmore Design: Formwechsel Designbüro, Düsseldorf Photography: Florian Sander,
Jochen Balke Lithography: TiMe GmbH, Mülheim Printing: Köller+Nowak GmbH, Düsseldorf.
© 2009 Siemens AG. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical photocopying, or otherwise, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.
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News flash
1 P
resident Alan Garcia Perez of Peru inaugurating
his country's first industrial cogeneration plant.
2Designed to exploit the gigantic coal resources in
Argentinian Patagonia: a 2 x 120-megawatt power
plant with two Siemens SST-900 steam turbines at
the heart of it.
2
1
3
“The results from the combustion tests with
high-level hydrocarbon content are very promising
for future applications for our medium-sized
industrial gas turbines. Combined with the successful full engine test, using fuel containing up to
40% nitrogen, these results clearly point the way to
increased fuel flexibility and a greater potential
for meeting customer demands.”
Jan-Erik Ryden, head of the Siemens industrial gas turbine business
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News flash
Around the world
1 First cogeneration plant in Peru
Tuesday 21st April saw the inauguration and official opening of Peru’s
first industrial cogeneration power plant in Callao, west of Lima, the
country’s capital city. At the heart of the plant is a Siemens 31-megawatt (MW) SGT-700 gas turbine, the second of the recently uprated
turbine type to come on line.
The principal guest and speaker at the inauguration was none other
than the Peruvian president himself, Alan Garcia Perez. President
Garcia expressed himself very excited by the high level of technology
applied in the plant, and did not hesitate to encourage other potential customers to follow the example of the pioneering plant owner,
Sudamericana, to realize the benefits of cogeneration in their power
portfolio.
“The partnership between Sudamericana and Siemens was exemplary:
the project was a technical success and a benchmark to follow,” says
Mr. Enrique Gubbins, CEO of Sudamericana. “This project is not only a
good investment for us in reliable technology, it is also a contribution
to the environment since cogeneration is a very efficient system of
creating energy with the minimum of waste.”
steam and gas turbines in their fleet. UTE RIO TURBIO is building a
2 x 120-MW coal-fired power plant in Rio Turbio. With an investment
of around 700 million USDollars the Argentinian state intends to
exploit the gigantic coal resources to produce electricity for the southern part of the country. This will benefit the development of the
region and its inhabitants, the aboriginal Tehuelche people, and also
the tourist areas around El Calafate, Punta Arenas and Puerto Madryr.
Surplus electricity will be fed into the national grid, the National
Interconnection System.
Siemens is supplying two SST-900 steam turbines, each with an output
of 119 MW. The plant has extreme atmospheric conditions, and will
utilize high-tech fluidized bed boilers to burn the low-grade mine coal.
As a result, it will be able to achieve European-standard emission
levels. Siemens will be responsible not only for the manufacture but
also the erection and commissioning of these most southerly steam
turbines in the world.
3 Gas turbine breakthrough on fuels containing
heavy hydrocarbons
Breathtaking glaciers and the wide dry pampas characterize the
Argentinian province of Santa Cruz in the south of Patagonia. But the
significant coal resources around the city of Rio Turbio are the reason
why Siemens is delivering two industrial steam turbines to the southernmost coal power plant in the world.
During December 2008, Siemens Energy performed extensive fuel
combustion testing for its medium-range (25–47 MW) industrial gas
turbines at the manufacturing facility in Finspong, Sweden. The
fuels contained artificially high levels of heavier hydrocarbons, and
good results were attained for all gas turbine conditions running in
DLE (Dry Low Emission) combustion mode. There was no indication
of flashback caused by autoignition or high flame speed and the
fuel flow in the burner was smooth enough to avoid long residence
times for ignitable mixtures to burn “out of place”.
In December 2007 the Argentinian Ministry of Mines and Y.C.R.T.
(Yacimiento Carbonífero Rio Turbio, the end customer) placed the
order with the joint venture UTE RIO TURBIO, comprising the Spanish
company Grupo Isolux Corsán and a local company Tecna Proyectos
y Operaciones. Grupo Isolux is a repeat customer with several Siemens
This is good news, since the proven fuel flexibility means that Siemens
can now confidently give documented combustion support to
customers. Establishing with certainty the potential for burning these
fuels means that Siemens can also reach out to more customers
requesting non-standard combustion performance.
2 Steam turbines for the world’s southernmost power
plant
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Focus
Wastewater — a suitable
case for treatment
Wastewater treatment is a multi-billion-euro contributor to the global water-supply industry, where
efficiency is literally vital for commercial survival — as well as for public health and well-being. A relative
newcomer to the Siemens family, Siemens Turbomachinery Equipment A/S is an acknowledged expert
in this niche engineering sector, helping the industry to raise efficiency in terms of both energy usage
and wastewater treatment, improving effluent quality and financial health of the utilities.
In today’s aggressively competitive environment, the need to apply the most cost-effective
industrial engineering solutions is vital for
commercial health. The water and sewerage
companies, in common with other public
utilities and service providers in industrialized
countries worldwide, not only face tougher
commercial competition, but are also being
forced to meet tighter environmental and
quality controls. Wastewater, industrial effluent
and sewage treatment operations have had
to clean up their acts to comply with the latest
statutory limits, reducing environmental
impact to an absolute minimum.
Danish roots in sludge
Based in the historic city of Helsingør in Denmark, Siemens Turbomachinery Equipment is a
small, specialized company manufacturing and
supplying state-of-the-art, single-stage turbocompressors and associated automated control
equipment, principally for waste water aeration
in ‘activated sludge’ biological treatment systems. Formerly a part of the Kühnle, Kopp &
Kausch (K,K&K) organization acquired by
Siemens in November 2006, the company has
fewer than 270 employees, but is an acknowledged world leader in this niche market, with
over 6,000 units installed world-wide and a
current annual turnover of around €85 million.
The wonderfully-named ‘activated sludge’
system of wastewater treatment involves
forcing air through a network of speciallydesigned fine bubble-generating diffusers,
installed typically in the base of treatment
tanks, raising oxygen levels in the water
in exactly the same way as a ‘bubbler’ in an
aquarium for pet fish. The oxygenated wastewater stimulates the growth of microorganisms,
which subsequently break down the dissolved
biological matter, converting it to an inert
sludge which, after further treatment, can be
disposed of or used for agricultural purposes.
The final cleaned effluent can be discharged
with complete safety into watercourses or used
for irrigation.
Drive for efficiency
The turbo-compressors manufactured in
Helsingør are motor/gearbox-driven machines
designed for constant speed and constant
mass-flow operation, giving the highest possible
operating efficiency. This system, combined
with the hydrodynamic bearings fitted to the
compressor, means that scheduled maintenance intervals are increased to 100,000 operating hours. Airflow is controlled using a
combination of inlet guide vanes (IGVs) and
outlet diffuser comprising a series of variable
discharge vanes. The electronically controlled
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Focus
"Initial investments
included latest
5-axis CNC
machines,cutting
impeller machining
steps from
6 to just 2."
Franz Alig, CEO Siemens Turbomachinery Equipment
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Focus
Ensuring maximum efficiency over an extremely wide operating field: adjustable inlet guide vanes and
discharge vanes (diffusors) of typical Siemens compressors for aeration applications.
IGVs, combined with individually designed
impellers, allow each compressor to be customized to meet precise customer requirements
for inlet temperature, pressure and flow. At
the same time, the discharge vanes enable the
output airflow to be controlled from 100 percent
to a downturn of just 45 percent. The fully
automated control system not only gives the
customer very precise control of output airflow,
but also enables the system to compensate for
seasonal changes in atmospheric conditions,
including air temperature, humidity and
density, at any given location around the globe.
Currently there are eight turbo-compressor
units in the range, providing output airflows
from 1,500 up to 125,000 cubic meters per
hour in power ratings from 50 kW to 3300 kW.
Non-stop running
The very high level of output turndown
provided by all machines in the range means
that, by using two similarly-rated compressors
in tandem, the operator can vary the output
airflow from 45 percent up to the full 200
percent discharge from the twinned installation. This unprecedented control facility allows
overall plant-operating efficiency to be raised
still further, reducing energy demand and
cutting operational costs very significantly. By
its very nature, the aerobic treatment of
wastewater is necessarily a continuous process,
which must operate 24/7, 365 days per year.
A typical installation will employ a total of
three compressors operating under a cascaded
control system, with two tandem units to
provide optimum airflow and a third standby
machine giving a high level of redundancy.
The system also allows all three compressors to
operate in rotational sequence to equalize the
running hours, the automated system enabling
each machine to be shut down and re-started
in sequence, without the need to shut down the
two remaining operational units or disrupting
continuous plant operation.
The ABC of controlled savings
As aeration represents well over 50 percent of
the total energy demand of an entire wastewater treatment plant, any possible savings
through increased efficiency offer a major
advantage for the operating utility. The combination of compact design, dual-vane control
and constant mass-flow in Siemens' Helsingørmanufactured turbo-compressors yields
world-beating mechanical efficiency of some
85 percent, reducing energy costs significantly.
Nevertheless, where the aeration system is
operated under simple open-loop manual or
semi-automated control, energy can be wasted
through excessive airflow and high dissolvedoxygen levels. Alternatively, biological action
and treatment will cease completely if levels
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Focus
Besos' wasterwater treatment plant near Barcelona, Spain. The company owns 16 wastewater
treatment plants with a total capacity of 800,000
inhabitant equivalents, serving 52 municipalities
with 500,000 inhabitants alongside the Besos river.
Showcase
Cleaning up in Spain
are allowed to fall too low, leading to plant
breakdown and major environmental problems.
However, Siemens' aeration units are designed
to operate with twin-track automation, combining electro-mechanical systems and a
specially developed Air-Biological Control, or
‘ABC’ system, in a fully integrated control loop.
Oxygen probes measuring dissolved O2 levels
together with airflow and discharge-pressure
controls are installed in conjunction with an
adaptive set-point pressure control to provide
optimum aerobic treatment conditions. Over
a typical 20-year life-cycle where energy usage
amounts to between 95 and 97 per cent of
the total running costs of an aeration unit,
Siemens' dedicated focus on system reliability
and energy efficiency is enabling water treatment utility companies to slash their energy
bills by up to a staggering 40 percent, compared
with conventional systems from other suppliers.
Pay as you benefit
At a time when the availability of credit for
capital equipment replacement projects is at
an all-time low, it takes some creativity to
promote advanced technology. In order to ease
investment decisions in favor of Siemens-
based upgrades to existing obsolescent and
inefficient equipment, Siemens Financial
Services offers a dedicated financing scheme.
Simply put, it lets customers pay for their
new, energy-efficient solution with the money
the solution saves them in terms of energy
costs. Typical payback times on capital expenditure are less than 5 years, after which
customers can fully enjoy ownership and
benefits of the Siemens solution over its
remaining service life of an averaged 15 years.
The wider perspective
While Siemens' aeration equipment and technological solutions have become the systems
of choice throughout the wastewater treatment
industry, applications are not just limited to
this niche market, but include a number of
fermentation processes in yeast and secondgeneration biofuel production, as well as
onshore fish farms. With further control-system technologies already in an advanced stage
of development, this newest member of the
Siemens Oil and Gas business is set to meet the
challenges and demands of the industry for
even higher water quality, energy efficiency
and plant reliability, for the foreseeable future.
While design parameters, theoretical facts,
figures and colorful presentations may
provide a certain degree of assurance, real-life
case-studies can help to convince even the
most skeptical of engineers about the true
performance of systems and equipment.
Venture takes a close look at a recent installation where Siemens is helping a water utility
save money — and the environment.
Located some 30 km north of Barcelona in Spain’s
Catalonia region, the city of Granollers is a major
commercial and industrial manufacturing center,
despite an agricultural history underlined by its
name, derived from the Latin word for grain.
Serving the city together with the surrounding
municipalities of Canovelles, Les Franqueses
del Vallès and the neighborhood of La Torreta in
La Roca del Vallès, the Granollers wastewater
treatment plant is owned by the locally based
Besos company.
Although the plant is independently operated,
Besos is responsible for quality control, maintenance and all research and development covering
not only the Granollers plant, but also the fifteen
other similar regional treatment plants owned by
the company.
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Focus
The bubbles, the Siemens solution, and a happy customer: "After a full 9 months of continuous operation, overall performance has exceeded our expectations.
The new compressors operate faultlessly, and energy savings are at around 30 percent." Angel Freixó i Rey, responsible for R&D&I at Besos' Granollers plant.
Meeting expectations
The Granollers plant is capable of treating around
30,000 cubic meters of industrial and domestic
wastewater per day, sufficient to meet the
requirements of a population of some 200,000
people. The plant layout is designed to provide
n+1 redundancy, with two Siemens aeration-compressor units in continuous operation and a
further standby unit to enable each machine to
be taken out of service in rotation for routine
maintenance. As energy use comprises some 30
percent of total plant-operating costs, second
only to the expense of sludge disposal, Besos’
choice of aeration treatment system was heavily
dependent on its energy-saving potential as
well as both its performance and reliability.
Based on the technical specifications in Siemens'
original proposal, possible energy savings were
estimated to be between 20 and 25 percent, and
three units were supplied together with Siemens’
Air-Biological Control (ABC) to the Granollers
plant. Following the subsequent installation of the
Siemens compressors and controls, Besos has
confirmed that, after a full 9 months of continuous
operation, overall performance has exceeded
expectations, the new compressors providing
faultless operation coupled with energy savings
running at around 30 percent — an outstanding
result made possible by the unique combination of
mechanical and biological control systems.
New moves
Underlining Besos’ satisfaction with the performance of the new compressor systems and the
very significant reduction in running costs at its
Granollers treatment facility, the company is
now looking to install energy-saving Siemens
aeration compressor-units as standard at all its
other 15 wastewater treatment plants in the
region. The move to standardize with Siemens
systems will not only reduce total energy use, but
will reduce through-life cost of ownership over
the company’s entire portfolio, through reductions
in both spares and maintenance requirements.
In an ideal scenario where wastewater treatment
plants throughout Spain were to be re-equipped
with high efficiency Siemens aeration systems,
daily energy usage would plummet by a minimum
of 480 megawatts, equivalent to around half the
output — and half the CO2 — from a billion-pluseuro coal-fired electricity generating plant.
Based on a mathematical model of optimum aerobic conditions for the bacteria used in biological
wastewater treatment, Siemens' Air-Biological Control (ABC) provides for a further boost in energy
savings by adding a new level of accuracy to the
aeration control system.
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The road ahead
A seasoned oil and gas man, Tom Blades joined Siemens at the beginning of the year as President and
CEO of the Oil & Gas Division of Siemens Energy. Venture sought his impressions and ideas on the position and direction of the oil and gas industry in general and Siemens’ oil and gas business in particular.
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Faces
Venture The past year has seen a roller-coaster
ride in primary energy prices and now we’re
talking global recession. In such times of change,
taking the post of CEO of a company delivering
to the oil and gas industry must be something of
a challenge?
Tom Blades Yes, it’s certainly a challenge,
but is it really a time of change? I think — and
my peers in the industry seem to agree —
that both mid-term and long-term nothing has
actually changed. Price-swings like these
are not uncommon in an industry which has
always been volatile. However, I do think that
the speed, size and perhaps the duration of the
swings are increasing and many people in the
industry are concerned with the speed of the
current downturn. I believe what we’re seeing here is a temporary situation. But prices will
definitely recover and will almost certainly rise
higher than before. In the meantime we have
to cope with the current situation, which is that
we’re back to the same oil prices as in 2004.
Unfortunately for suppliers, the next 12 months
will see the major players trying to balance
2004 prices and 2009 costs.
Venture Coming afresh from a very different
company, how do you view Siemens’ current
profile in the oil and gas industry?
Tom Blades From an outside perspective,
Siemens has a great image as a long-established supplier of high-tech industrial systems,
components and equipment. On the other hand,
it is still developing the high profile as a major
player in the oil and gas business needed for
the credibility to offer specific solutions to customers in this sector. That’s part of our challenge: to move up the decision-making tree, to
transform from component supplier to genuine
partner with the customer.
Venture Isn’t there a big variation in how the
Siemens ‘brand’ is seen by different customers in
the oil and gas industry? Some have no brand
recognition; others refer explicitly to the Siemens
brand value.
Tom Blades Yes, that’s true. Customer
response is likely to include the reliability of
the Siemens brand as well as the products
themselves. When the product is supplied by a
"The leopard
may change
its name
but it doesn’t
change
its spots."
company with a reputation for reliability and
service, the customer is buying a level of
confidence. But I would venture to say that,
although Siemens is relatively well-known and
respected by middle-management as a supplier to the oil and gas industry, brand recognition has not yet reached board-level. That we
have to change. That has to happen.
Venture With regard to the oil and gas industry:
where was Siemens five years ago, where is it now
— in terms of say, structure, investments and
quality — and where do you want it to be five
years from now?
Tom Blades Well, of course I have only a
general impression of the company’s previous
position, but if I try to describe Siemens Oil &
Gas as it was then, it would be essentially as a
sales and marketing channel for Siemens
industrial products, with efforts directed at
selling components and equipment to oil and
gas customers.
Today, five years later, we manufacture and
market three product ranges — steam turbines,
gas turbines and compressors — and have set
up an oil and gas industry solutions business
including electrical and automation equipment. The objective is that — without neglecting the existing mature markets such as
power generation or the chemical industry —
we use the all-fields solutions approach to
increase our share of the global oil and gas
market, because that’s where we see the
opportunity for growth in the coming years.
We already have a major slice of the mature
market that we need to defend, although it is
not likely to grow significantly over the coming
years. Added to that we have the oil and gas
business where we see excellent potential for
future growth, which is why this division was
formed in the first place! So not only do we
have our own products, we also have the ability
to provide end-to-end solutions for our
customers. And this sector, where we are
expanding fastest, will provide ‘pull-through’
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Faces
"Even in today’s
financial climate
we are able to
take ‘make-or-buy’
decisions on a
company level."
for a whole range of other systems and equipment — such as transformers, switchgear,
variable-speed drives and process-control systems — all supplied from businesses within
the Siemens family. And that, I think, will lead
in turn into other relevant technologies and
products, taking us from a product sales and
marketing organization, to being a real
supplier of end-to-end solutions.
Venture: So strategic shopping is not yet over?
Tom Blades No, absolutely not. I think, in fact,
that even in today’s financial climate, one of
Siemens’ great strengths is that we are able to
take ‘make-or-buy’ decisions on a company
level. Of course we aren’t immune to the current
global downturn, but we are faring better than
most of our competitors and are actually seeing
improvements in many areas of the business.
Venture: A recent customer satisfaction survey
showed that the Siemens brand is recognized for
its reliability, and the quality of its manufacturing
and engineering technology, but there must be
other areas with room for improvement. How
might you tackle these?
Tom Blades Well, one of the findings of the
survey was that we’re not responsive enough,
which I believe is not just a human factor
but more of an organizational issue. As a newcomer, I don’t think Siemens is the easiest
company to understand. After four months, I’m
still learning how we’re organized. What I’m
seeing is that, although we have great resources, they’re not always aligned or tuned to each
other. It’s a bit like an orchestra; if the tuning
or rhythm is a bit ‘off’, you’ll hear a difference
and I think that’s maybe what our customers
are referring to in terms of responsiveness.
Venture: And how do you propose to retune the
orchestra?
Tom Blades Well, the strategy will depend, of
course, on guidance from corporate headquarters, in terms of what is possible and what
makes best business sense. First and foremost,
however, we have to work to get closer to the
customer, perhaps along the lines of the
company’s Brazil Chemtech organization. There
we have quite a significant engineering organization that’s very close to its customers in
that country, with local resources and local
personnel and very well managed. This has
resulted in tremendous customer confidence,
not necessarily to buy products but to solve real
problems.
After all, it is easier to do business with partners
and friends than it is with strangers.
Venture: Are there any other examples of similar
‘Best Practice’?
Tom Blades Yes, we have a similar situation
in Houston, Texas, through another Siemens
company called Berwanger, where we are
ramping up efforts in the same way. The company operates in exploration, refineries
and haz-op analysis in complex chemical or
refining processes where it is absolutely
essential to have an intimate knowledge of the
customer’s process from every angle. For that
kind of company, you need confidence in the
people before you even consider giving them
any business. I’m happy to say we’re in that
position and have something we can build on.
We also have a group in South-East Asia with
a small number of people in Kuala Lumpur and
Singapore, and we need to take the operation
forward to turn the small group into a critical
mass.
Venture Regarding the oil and gas industry, what
do you see as the biggest areas for growth? What
other strategic areas or applications would you like
to focus on and how might Siemens be able to
help?
Tom Blades The leopard may change its name
but it doesn’t change its spots. Our mature
market for rotating equipment is one where we
need to maintain our position, retaining and
growing our market share wherever and whenever possible. I definitely see ‘green’ power
generation as a major growth area. Solar thermal is a very attractive direct market for us, as
is cogeneration with the turbines in our range.
Venture: Apart from these more ‘mature’ market
areas, where do you see future opportunities for
the oil and gas business?
Tom Blades My 30 years in the oil and gas
industry have taught me that it really is a cyclic
business. I think this is the fifth time I’ve seen
oil go from sky-high prices to a slump followed
by a full recovery! It’s not really growth that’s
driving the business; it’s depletion of resources.
Technologies such as steam or water injection,
gas compression and advanced subsea systems
are all areas which are becoming economically
viable as oil prices increase and are all technologies in which Siemens is active and can
provide solutions, both now and for the future.
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Resumé
Age:
52, born in Hamburg, Germany
Nationality:
British, bilingual upbringing (German and English)
Family:
Married, two children
Hobbies:
Golf, diving, and triathlon
Vocational training:
Electrical engineer
Career history
1978:
Schlumberger, ultimately 1993–1996
Vice President and General Manager
Schlumberger/Geco-Prakla
1996:
NUMAR Corporation, COO and
Executive Vice President
1997:
Halliburton, Executive Vice President
1998:
SPECTRO, President and CEO
2004:
CHOREN Industries, President and CEO
Since 01/2009:
Siemens Energy Sector, CEO Oil & Gas Division
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The Duisburg
Mega Test Center,
revisited
Back in July 2008, Venture reported on the inauguration of the stunning new Mega Test Center —
the MTC — built as part of the facilities at Siemens
Oil & Gas international headquarters at Duisburg,
Germany. Now, just one year after its official opening, we re-visit the giant new Center to see if reality
has met expectations.
Designed to provide comprehensive test facilities for compressors
and their associated drive systems
in all sizes including the largest
machines currently designed and
built by Siemens the company’s
giant Mega Test Center has just
celebrated its very first ‘birthday’.
Inaugurated in March 2008, less
than two years after the first
earth-moving machines rumbled
onto the site, the MTC has seen a
full twelve months of engineering
activity and now presents a rather
different appearance to the vast,
almost-empty building which
welcomed the crowds of invited
guests during the opening
ceremony.
Heavyweight testing
The past year has been one of
continuously increasing activity,
with comprehensive testing successfully completed on no fewer
than seven compressor strings.
While at first glance this may not
sound like a particularly impressive number, bear in mind that
these ‘strings’, comprising the
090528_Venture_11_RZ_2.indd 17
complete steam and electric drive
systems, massive multi-stage
compressors and all ancillaries,
including lubrication and coolant
systems, controls and instrumentation, can be as large as a
good-sized house, weigh in at
many hundreds of tonnes and
consume enough energy to power
a small town. Two of these seven
super-sized heavyweights from the
Siemens stable, developed and
built at Duisburg and tested in the
new MTC, were designed for air
separation applications. Two
further machine-strings were built
for use in natural gas liquefaction
(LNG) plants and the other three
compressor strings to complete
their test-regimes in the new
facility were designed for continuous-process applications in the
petrochemical industry and for
gas liquefaction.
Making it big in China
China’s huge coal deposits not only
make this black gold the most
important source of energy in the
country, but new technologies also
29.05.2009 16:13:38 Uhr
Monitor
1
enable the production of liquid
fuels and a very wide variety of
chemicals from basic coal feedstock, offering increasing independence from crude oil and natural
gas. The two massive air-compressor-trains, which were assembled and recently completed
comprehensive operational testing
at the MTC, were ordered by Air
Liquide (Hangzhou) for the
Ningxia Coal Industry Group in the
People’s Republic of China, under a
contract worth some 25 million
euros. Currently being installed in
what will become the world’s
largest polypropylene plant,
operated by Shenhua Ltd and due
to start production later this year,
the two giant machine-trains each
consist of an STC-SR axial-radial air
compressor, an STC-GV (H)
final-pressure air compressor, and
an SST-600 steam-turbine drive
from Siemens’ Görlitz manufacturing center and all ancillary
systems and controls. Operating
rather like enormous refrigerators,
the compressor trains will be used
in air separation plants and will
each produce 3,000 tons of oxygen
per day. With a capacity of 700,000
cubic meters of air per hour, the
machines are themselves among
the largest of their kind ever built.
A third compressor string, built at
Duisburg and assembled and
tested in the new Center, is also
being shipped to Shenhua
2
International’s Yinchuan coal-tochemicals polypropylene plant.
Like the previous two machines it
comprises an STC-GV six-stage
integrally geared compressor with
an SST-600 steam-turbine drive,
but this third monster machine
train will form part of the main
fluidized-bed gasification process,
where coal is converted into
synthetic-gas feedstock. Designed
to compress 82,300 cubic meters of
carbon dioxide per hour to a final
pressure of 58 bar, the entire
machine underwent efficiencytesting at the MTC using CO2
test-gas in a closed-loop configuration, prior to being readied for
shipping.
Planned expansion
With the Mega Test Center currently operating at close to maximum
capacity, with some 20 machine
strings either on test or being
assembled, as one mega-machine
is shipped out another is being
readied to move in. While some
final commissioning work on the
existing building is still being
carried out, plans to expand the
facility are already in place. This
will not only include increasing
the number of highly qualified
test engineers at the Center, but
also extending its capabilities.
Believed to be the only facility of
its kind capable of supplying
steam at 100 bar/500°C at flow
rates up to 7,500 cubic meters per
3
4
hour to test advanced prototype
machines, it is planned to increase
flow rates still further to meet
customer requirements for even
larger and more advanced steamturbine drives. A separate gasturbine test facility is also being
planned, using shared facilities
including cooling systems, while
test facilities including large loadbanks are scheduled to meet
future needs for complete steam
and gas turbine generator sets.
With visitors from major international customers from the oil and
gas industry continually impressed
with the scale and range of expertise available at the MTC, reducing
on-site commissioning times and
reducing customer risk, its ‘mega’
future looks set to continue.
1A three-case (low/mid/highpressure) steam-turbine-driven
compressor string for an olefin
plant in the Persian Gulf region.
2During test drive: One of two
massive air-compressor trains
currently being installed in what
will become the world’s largest
polypropylene plant, located at
Yinchuan in China’s coal-rich
Ningxia region.
3A CO2 compressor for the main
fluidized-bed gasification process
at the Yinchuan propylene plant.
4Main refrigerant compressor
trains for an Indonesian mid-size
LNG plant — an emerging application in the oil and gas industry.
The MTC at a glance:
 Assembling and testing of up to six compressor trains
in parallel
 Full-load, closed-loop testing of compressor trains of up
to100 MW
 Part-load, open-loop testing of mega-scale compressors
ith electric motors of up to 100 MW;
w
with steam turbines of up to 35 MW;
 and with gas turbines of up to 160 MW.


 Direct access from heavy-load crane to jetty
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Spotlight
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Spotlight
New ‘VOIS’ for South Korea’s
oil and gas giant
SK Energy, one of the largest oil and gas companies in the AsiaPacific region, is continuing to expand on a global scale. As part of
the company’s multi-million-USD strategic plans to boost productivity and operational efficiency, the company recently installed a
comprehensive Visualized Operations Intelligence System (VOIS)
at its principal refinery and production complex at Ulsan, based on
Siemens’ SIMATIC IT XHQ. In full operation since February this year,
the new VOIS has already proved so successful that SK Energy is looking to extend the system to its other business units.
With a history spanning more than 40 years
in the oil, gas and petrochemicals industry, this
South Korean-based company, originally
founded as a state-owned enterprise, not only
established the country’s very first oil refinery
but has grown massively over the past four
decades. Operating in the private sector since
1980, SK Energy has become Korea’s leading
private-sector producer and supplier of olefins
and petrochemical products. The company
manufactures well in excess of 240 million
barrels per year of refined petroleum products,
in addition to supplying 35 percent of the
domestic demand; around 100 million barrels
are directly exported, to a value in 2007 equivalent to more than 16 billion USD (€ 12 billion).
Currently one of the largest primary energy
companies in the Asia-Pacific region, SK Energy
is now operating on an increasingly global
scale. The company is currently either exploring or producing from wells in 27 oil and gas
‘blocks’ in 15 countries worldwide and has
proven reserves exceeding 500 million barrels
of oil-equivalent (mboe).
Going for growth
The company’s principal refining and petrochemical processing operations are based at
its refinery complex at Ulsan. Located on the
coast 70 km north of Busan in the southeast of
the country, the refinery, one of the largest of
its kind in the world, with production peaking
in excess of 840,000 barrels per day, forms
a major part of the country’s main industrial
area — the Ulsan Industrial District. In
addition, SK Energy also owns and operates a
second major refinery at Incheon, on the
opposite coast some 315 km northwest of the
Ulsan complex, having acquired Incheon Oil in
2006. SK Energy is currently undertaking the
third phase, from 2008–2010, of its long-term
strategic plans for international expansion,
increasing its competitiveness in key petroleum and petrochemicals businesses in global
markets. It is already supplying markets in
China, the US and Europe. This expansion,
maximizing shareholder value and laying the
groundwork for this latest phase of rapid
growth, is based on the optimization of the
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Spotlight
Ulsan Complex Overview
Offsite Overview
From tanker jetty through processing to storage and offloading, VOIS aggregates operational data from
just about any unit at SK Energy's vast Ulsan Complex.
Inventory Overview
company’s petroleum and petrochemical
businesses, which includes raising productivity
and operating efficiency at its Ulsan Complex.
Raising the game
Product Inventory
Tag Details
Although extensive IT, business and process
monitoring systems were in place throughout
the complex, these comprised discrete, individual ‘point’ or ‘silo’-type applications, each
designed to provide data covering a specific
function or area of application. Although the
information was recorded, these disparate
systems were unable to provide timely information to operate as decision-making tools,
either for operators or for managers. Time
taken for the extraction, aggregation and
physical interpretation of data from discrete
systems made it both unreliable and unsuitable for real-time intervention. The existing
scheme of things was good for ‘post-mortem’
analysis only. As SK Energy’s Senior Vice
President Mr. Sung observed, “In order to
become a world-class company we realized we
had to implement industry best-practices by
removing the functional and informational
‘silo’. In addition, we needed to communicate
corporate objectives to our engineers and
support them with accurate and timely information.” “Our people are smart and giving them
the right tools empowers them to take the
right decisions at the right time. This helps to
improve efficiency, productivity and profitability.”
Profit generator
Before making the necessary significant
investment in any new state-of-the-art system,
the company evaluated a variety of competing
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Spotlight
Ulsan Complex Overview
Area Overview
Should any unit run out of spec, VOIS issues an SMS or e-mail alert to ensure immediate response and
problem-solving.
Tag Details
VOIS enables the user to penetrate
information from the top-level screens
by virtually drilling down to field-instrumentation level in order to identify
the root of a potential problem.
products against its specific criteria, looking
particularly at existing successful installations
at other companies in the industry. It became
clear that Siemens’ Operations Intelligence
suite (XHQ,) is the most widely used and “best
in the class”. Starting with Chevron Texaco's
implementation in 2002, XHQ has become the
system of choice for an increasing number of
industry-majors worldwide. These include
Exxon Mobil, Saudi Aramco, Hovensa, Caltex,
Singapore Refinery and Idemitsu Kosan. In all
these instances the new operations intelligence
solution from Siemens was shown to have
provided fundamental and sustained operational improvements. According to Idemitsu,
one of the largest refinery and petrochemical
companies in Japan, additional profits
amounting to 800 million Yen (€ 6.1 million)
were reported from its Hokkaido refinery
within one year of implementation of XHQ
solution and attributable directly to it. In
recognition of the outstanding value generated
by the solution, in 2007 the Japanese Institute
of Information Technology (JIIT) presented
Idemitsu with its highest award.
Giving VOIS to Ulsan
Following the evaluation of possible systems,
SK Energy opted to implement the Siemens
Operations Intelligence solution XHQ throughout its Ulsan Complex in June 2008. Visualized
Operation Intelligence System (VOIS) is the
name of the project which pursues the vision
“No Visualization — No Movement — No
Improvement!” The implementation of the
complex-wide system was completed in
October 2008 within four months, despite
some minor issues, such as the need to
translate some information from Korean into
English as the working language. After internal
reviews and minor modifications, the solution
was formally released to the complete user
community in February 2009. Commenting on
this remarkable achievement, Mr. Sung stated
with understandable pride, “Our SK energy
people, our local partner and the guys from
Siemens formed a dream team!” The system
covered the majority of functional areas and
around 70 process units in both the refinery
and the petrochemical plant, providing
information for more than 1000 users. The
company describes the VOIS as a user-friendly
visualization tool, enabling users to obtain
essential information for day-to-day use for
locations and functional areas including
Offsite, Onsite, Process, Operations and
Product Management. Users range across the
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Spotlight
"No visualization, no movement, no improvement!" — Hag-Yong Sung, Senior Vice President Production Management & Strategy at SK Energy
entire workforce, with data shared by some
140 board-level directors and senior managers,
to around 1000 supervisors, engineering staff
and plant operators, enabling the whole plant
to be monitored continuously and at many
levels.
Panoramic view
Combining and aggregating data from
multiple sources around the entire refinery
and associated petrochemical process plant,
the new XHQ-based VOIS is designed to present
vital operational information visually in a
meaningful, contextualized manner — on
demand, with appropriate security — at the
right time, to every user at the plant, from
plant operator to CEO. The system is able to
meet the differing needs of the very large
number and variety of users. It provides a
bird’s eye overview of the plant and processes,
with the option to drill down to the lowest level
of detail, through multiple layers of information, to access necessary details of a functional
area or individual process. It allows the users
to concentrate on their work rather than spend
time creating reports or mining for data.
Wider perspective, better understanding
Allowing information to be shared widely has
also improved interdepartmental communications and helped users to relate better to each
other, providing greater understanding of
different job-functions. The requirement for
minimal training combined with the ability
of the user-friendly system to paint the user’s
display screen in just seconds, speeds up and
simplifies very significantly the flow of
information throughout the company. It also
allows potential problems to be easily identified and monitored, decisions to be taken and
actions implemented without delay, preventing
unscheduled downtime, optimizing operations
and increasing overall plant efficiency. Instead
of relying on ‘post-event’ reports to provide
information on alarms, control malfunctions
or set-point excursions, the XHQ-based VOIS
not only provides on-screen information on the
user computer, but also automatically sends
SMS messages or emails to the relevant people,
enabling immediate action to be taken.
Present benefits, future advantages
While the newly installed system has been
extremely well received by the entire user
community of the Ulsan site and is rapidly
becoming a de facto mission-critical application, its benefits are also becoming more widely
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Spotlight
"Our SK Energy
people, our
local partner
and the guys
from Siemens
formed a
dream team."
apparent. Its ability to provide rapid and visual
display allows the user to both see and understand what is happening in the next (downstream) or previous (upstream) process is not
only highly beneficial for operators and
managers within the refinery and petrochemical plant, but also enables fast and effective
cross-functional communications between
partners throughout the supply chain, such as
the production departments and the marketing
functions. In addition to increasing the
effectiveness and utilization of existing
plant-wide information and business systems,
Siemens’ XHQ has actually reduced their
loading and has made quite significant changes
in the way that the company will undertake
extensions or additions to its existing information networks. Linking future modifications
to the XHQ-based VOIS will leverage significant
advantages for new projects. A number of
smaller IT projects have already been moved,
integrating them with the VOIS.
Building on success
Although the system is already providing
direct major cost-saving benefits, it has been
up-and-running for only a few months (from
February 2009) so efficiency improvements
and cost-savings have not yet been quantified
with any accuracy. Nonetheless, Mr. Sung
appears to be more than satisfied with results
to date, commenting, “We confidently expect to
achieve returns of many times the capital cost
of the project in these first few months of
operation alone.” In fact, the VOIS project has
proved so successful that the company is now
looking to install a second plant-wide XHQ
system at the Incheon refinery complex and
throughout its headquarters operation in
Seoul. In addition, SK Energy has indicated that
it sees major longer-term advantages in
implementing the system to integrate information from multiple business units, eliminating
functional and IT-imposed boundaries in
exactly the same way as at the Ulsan Complex.
Clearly, another satisfied customer and another
winning solution from Siemens.
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www.siemens.com
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