Use spreadsheets for better refinery operation
J. R. White · OSTI OAI (U.S. Department of Energy Office of Scientific and Technical Information) · 1986
The advent within the last several years of sophisticated, user-oriented, computer techniques of spreadsheet programming has opened the door to consideration of an alternative to linear programming. It has become possible to represent all of the unit operations and stream flows of a major petroleum refinery on a single spreadsheet and have that spreadsheet establish a continuous overall refinery balance that responds to every change the engineer wishes to explore. The response time for a new balance can vary from about 5 to 15 seconds using widely available present-day microcomputers. With faster microprocessors becoming available, it is expected to be less than 1 second within just a few years. The spreadsheet, in effect, carries out the same balancing that required many laborious hours of work 30 years ago. It does this balancing without optimization; the refinery engineer interacts with the spreadsheet program to make optimizing adjustments.