What is a digital twin? What are its benefits? Is it applicable to my business? If these are the questions you're asking, you've come to the right blog post.
Learn about digital twins in business, how they are combined with simulation, and check out the on-topic case studies from various industries.
YPF is the largest oil producer in Argentina. It has 43% of the oil and gas production market and 58% of the gasoline market in the country. They hired consultants from Continente Siete to develop a decision support system (DSS) for determining work schedules.
The new maintenance planning system helped YPF save $18 million annually at the pilot implementation site. Forecasts suggest, the integration of the DSS with the work processes of other sites should save the company another $234 million per year.
Canada's oil reserves are third only to Venezuela and Saudi Arabia, and over 95% of these reserves are in the oil sands deposits in the province of Alberta. Oil sands are a deposit of loose sand or partially consolidated sandstone containing petroleum or other hydrocarbons which require in situ methods for production. The in situ method is more costly than the mining method, but it's much less damaging to the environment, requiring only a few hundred meters of land and a nearby water source to operate. It's estimated by the Alberta government that 70-80% of oil in the oil sands is buried too deep for open pit mining; therefore, in situ methods will likely be the future of extracting oil from oil sands. The most common form of in situ is called Steam Assisted Gravity Drainage (SAGD). With the SAGD technique, a pair of horizontal wells, situated 4 to 6 meters above the other, is drilled from a central well pad. In a plant nearby, water is transformed into steam which then travels through above-ground pipelines to the wells and enters the ground via a steam injection (top) well.
For any industry, adopting new technology can be costly both in time, and money. As most of you know, adopting simulation modeling is the way around making costly unnecessary changes and depleting human resources. New to the simulation and modeling concept as a decision-making and problem-solving tool, is the oil & gas industry. Alvaro Gil from Steam Systems Ltd. guides us through the implementation of simulation modeling, the data behind the models, bumps in the road, and ultimately the return on investment. Utilizing simulation and modeling to address oil & gas industry challenges, Stream Systems helps clients realize billions of dollars in cost-savings.
The design and development of a new tank terminal, an extension to an existing tank terminal, or the optimization of a current facility is a large undertaking. The typical project has to deal with numerous design challenges and design trade-offs. Simulation is the only effective way to understand how the various terminal components (tanks, manifolds, transfer lines, pipelines, etc.) interact and how they are affected by controllable and non-controllable events. At the AnyLogic Conference 2014, Allan Chegus, CEO, and Dumitru from Stream Systems, Ltd. demonstrated how simulation models can be used to increase throughput, improve operating efficiency, and reduce cost by avoiding unnecessary capital expenditures.