A novel hierarchical data management structure to improve energy efficiency in oil refineries

Based on the recent increase in price of crude oil, some policies are adopted by countries on energy consumption, among which energy efficiency improvement is one of the most promising one. Energy efficiency improvement contributes a significant profit in the oil refinery industry, since it is an important energy consumer industry. In this study, a hierarchical structure is proposed to manage energy data of oil refineries. The proposed structure consists of different indicators in three levels including refinery, process units and equipments. Having indicators calculated, some results are obtained. At first, problems of the energy consumption are diagnosed throughout the company. Then, the gap between current value and design/standard value of any energy index is calculated. After diagnosing problems, improvement projects are defined, upon which an energy efficiency improvement is developed by prioritizing the projects. Additionally, a case study provides implementation results of the proposed structure in an international oil refinery.