Simon Pugh, Senior Product Lead: SmartPM
Edward Ishiyama, Senior Research Project Engineer

Acquired by HTRI in 2016, SmartPM has primarily been used in crude refinery preheat trains, where it aids management of fouling by closely monitoring performance to assist with predictive maintenance. Its capabilities now extend beyond preheat trains to other shell-and-tube exchanger networks, where it can help reduce energy costs and increase operating margins. Thoroughly tested in refineries, SmartPM is being used worldwide.

Refinery engineers use the software to perform data reconciliation on plant data and calculate exchanger performance parameters, including fouling resistance. Using dynamic fouling models, engineers then predict how exchangers should foul in the future and how this will affect network performance.

SmartPM can then determine efficient exchanger cleaning schedules, allowing companies to save energy and operating costs, reduce downtime, and ensure throughput levels. Its smart technology enables “what if” scenario planning, such as assessing economic benefits of better heat exchanger design, the use of antifoulant chemicals, or cost and operational penalties as a result of refining new crude blends with higher fouling propensities.

The latest version of the software, SmartPM 3.0, implements HTRI heat transfer and pressure drop methods to significantly improve prediction reliability. SmartPM 3.0 can now import Xist^® cases for faster model building, and its built-in data historian can export performance data to Xist for further analysis of design enhancements, equipment changes, or revamps.

To improve your performance and profit margin, contact us about the various options to utilize SmartPM: [email protected].

On the left is the SmartPM model of a preheat train. On the right is historic and predicted performance information for a selected exchanger, based on an optimum cleaning schedule.