29/01/2024 News
Optimize your installations with GRIF!
The Petro module (Simulation package) of the GRIF software suite - GRaphiques Interactifs pour la Fiabilité - enables production availability studies (PAS) to be carried out and industrial installations to be optimized.
The GRIF software suite provides a set of powerful tools, developed and enhanced by TotalEnergies for over forty years, capable of modeling hundreds of data items to optimize the production, safety, costs and carbon footprint of the systems studied. Used both internally and externally since 2005, it has successfully supported a wide range of industrial sectors: aeronautics, defense, telecommunications, healthcare, energy... Over 300 licenses have already been sold worldwide. "PAS studies, in particular, make it possible to accurately model the operation and malfunctioning of various critical equipment, and thus predict the performance of installations at different timescales," explains Nicolas Clavé, Head of the RAM entity at TotalEnergies OneTech, and a specialist in production reliability and availability.
Testing different hypotheses
"In the context of the PAS, it's a matter of imagining different scenarios and testing them," adds Maïder Estécahandy, reliability engineer and head of the GRIF project. "All professions are involved in data collection and the formalization of hypotheses. The aim is to be as comprehensive as possible to obtain reliable results." Both planned and unplanned events are considered in the simulation. For offshore installations - marine wind turbines, gas or oil platforms... - we model maintenance teams, the time needed to access the site, the type of boat used, the hours of intervention... Connected to the PANGEA supercomputer at the Jean Féger Scientific and Technical Center in Pau, in just a few minutes GRIF completes calculations that would take several days on a simple computer. "With PAS studies, we can easily model the impact of a compressor failure after 10, 100 or 1,000 hours of operation," explains Cyrille Mirgain, Maintenance Manager at One Tech. The methodology is robust. "Thanks to mathematics, the issues at stake can be quantified with precision, and decisions to adjust installations are no longer based on a mere feeling."
Reporting results
All the modules in GRIF software suite's Simulation package have three objectives: to assess the performance level of a project or an existing asset, to identify weak points and to provide recommendations (design, spare parts, operating philosophy, maintenance philosophy, etc.) to optimize the production/cost/CO₂ emissions balance. At the end of the PAS studies, the simulations are returned to the project teams. The data then provides concrete information on production availability - positive or negative - which is a real source of improvement. A value engineering process is launched to get closer to production targets, simplify the installation and make it less costly.
Today, PAS studies, which have proved their worth in the field of fossil fuels, are supporting new "industrial objects", notably REN projects - wind and photovoltaic farms, hydrogen plants... - and CO₂capture-storage.
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