Oil blending in oil refineries defines not just production yields but also fouling behavior in the crude pre-heat train and the atmospheric the furnace. While some guidelines for incompatibility exist, it is very difficult to predict the impact of blending decisions on the fouling behaviour together with the operating conditions, heat exchanger configuration and current state of the equipment. As a result, it is not possible to assess at the production planning stage the impact on energy consumption and CO₂ emissions of the blending choices.

Crude Slate Design™, an add-on module to Hexxcell Studio™ dedicated to oil refineries, provides a data-driven, predictive approach to evaluating the effect that the selection of oils have on fouling behaviour on the crude distillation unit. As a result, oil planners can use this tool to assess, in a simple way and ahead of time how their blending decisions are going to impact operations (e.g. hitting furnace or hydraulic limits etc.) and to quantify the costs of processing specific slates both in economic and environmental terms. This information can also be fed back to operators and used to further optimise plant performance and maintenance actions.

1. Generation and visualisation of optimal cleaning scheduling with various KPIs (e.g. Energy, Economic):
- Which heat exchangers to clean and when to clean them
- How to clean it (mechanically, chemically, thermally)
- Clean today: best exchanger to clean today
- Clean on opportunity: best exchanger to clean during a shutdown

2. Simulation of cleaning actions including different types (pre-defined and user-defined): e.g. mechanical, chemical, thermal

3. Optimal operation of flow split in combination with cleaning actions