The plant has always been designed to process Russian Urals oil.
(Photo: Bloomberg)
Dusseldorf At the PCK refinery in Schwedt, fears are growing that production will have to be shut down. Following Russia’s attack on Ukraine, the European Union is considering an oil embargo that would hit PCK hard. Should this happen, the refinery would have to shut down operations in the worst case – with dramatic consequences for the supply of East Germany, where around nine out of ten vehicles are powered by fuel from Schwedt.
PCK’s refinery has always been designed to process Russian Urals oil. In 1964, the plant as a petrochemical combine in the GDR began to produce a wide variety of fuels in Schwedt – from petrol to diesel to kerosene. Alternative suppliers have not been necessary since then: Russia has delivered both cheaply and reliably over the years. But now people in Schwedt are preparing for an end to the great dependency.
Richard Büssow and his company Industrial Analytics should help to find alternatives for the refinery. With the algorithms developed by the company, systems from the process industry can be monitored, digitally simulated and then optimized. The company makes use of the data generated during the operation of pumps, turbines, pipelines and compressors.
On this basis, the employed mathematicians and physicists create a computer model that digitally imitates the behavior of the respective machine with the help of artificial intelligence and can be fed with simulation data.
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Industrial Analytics is currently in talks with PCK to check the extent to which the digital models of the plant can be used to simulate a switch to other types of oil, reports Büssow. However, it is not yet clear what the composition is in detail. “That’s why we can’t say anything concrete about the feasibility until we’ve carried out the appropriate analyses.”
But in times of crisis, Industrial Analytics offers the right digital tools. The start-up can calculate how far the flow can be lowered through a compressor without entering an unstable operating range or increasing energy consumption. Or how well the individual units in the factory can handle other types of oil that have a different composition than Russian oil.
Vattenfall and Covestro are also among the customers
PCK is not the only customer for Büssow’s start-up Industrial Analytics, which he founded in 2017 together with some colleagues from his former employer MAN Energy Solutions. The energy supplier Vattenfall also works with the Berlin software company, as does the plastics manufacturer Covestro. “We have specialized in the process industry because the same devices are used in almost all segments,” says the founder. He is currently in talks with food producers, for example, to broaden the customer base.
The engineer, who has a doctorate and specializes in acoustics, sees himself at an advantage over the manufacturers of the individual machines that can be found in the plant parks of the process industry. “We are independent and our team can model any machine,” says Büssow. This also makes the customer more independent, who does not necessarily have to commit to the software of just one machine manufacturer when digitizing his system.
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