The stock-market crash of 2008-’09 may have delayed the expected exodus of retiring baby boomers from the ranks of process industry personnel. But for manufacturers—which depend upon experienced process control operators to keep plants running safely and efficiently—it may be only a temporary reprieve.

“Once the economy comes back and people’s 201(k)s become 401(k)s again and retirement is once again an option, I think we’re going to see people leaving en masse,” predicts Jeff Hackney, DeltaV OTS global sales manager at Emerson Process Management, the Austin, Texas-based process automaton vendor. Indeed, by some estimates, process industry manufacturers stand to lose half or more of their process control talent to retirement during the next five to 10 years.

Companies are exploring various ways to capture or replace that knowledge before it walks out the door. And while no single solution is likely to suffice, many agree that Operator Training Simulator (OTS) systems hold major promise as one method for getting new, inexperienced operators quickly up to speed.

Speed learning

“I can take an operator who has no control room operations experience and have him sitting, by himself, on the panel, within four months. And that would be very comfortable,” says Stan Hamilton, simulation training specialist at an oil-sands upgrading plant operated by Nexen Inc., in Fort McMurray, Alberta, Canada.

That’s no small feat, given the complexity of the Nexen process, which combines proprietary OrCrude upgrading technology, hydrocracking and gasification to produce premium synthetic crude oil from bitumen extracted using Steam Assisted Gravity Drainage (SAGD) techniques. Nexen uses an Emerson DeltaV distributed control system (DCS) to control the plant process, which was simulated prior to start-up using OTS technology supplied by SimSci-Esscor, part of automation supplier Invensys Operations Management (IOM), based in Plano, Texas.

“Up here in Canada, it’s getting harder and harder to get qualified people to come in who have had experience with control rooms,” says Hamilton. “So we’re starting to take people from other fields, such as pulp and paper, whose process backgrounds are very limited. Yes, they may have run with a DCS, but not with the complexity of the plants that we’re running,” he observes.

Hamilton credits the OTS as a major factor in quickly bringing these operators up to speed. Each console operator undergoes 160 hours on the simulator during the initial four-month training period, and will spend a minimum of 40 additional hours per year in OTS refresher training, Hamilton says.

Like most greenfield projects these days, the simulator was built well ahead of the actual Nexen plant production start-up early this year. The OTS contract was awarded in 2005, and the SimSci-built, high-fidelity, dynamic simulation model required about two years to complete. In all, the OTS system incorporates “thousands” of input/output (I/O) points and came in at a price point of around $3 million.

Prior to plant start-up, “we used the simulation to prove out our DCS configuration,” Hamilton notes, along with the control configuration for “a very involved SIS (safety integrated system) for the gas supplier.” OTS training of operators was also begun well ahead of plant start-up, so that operators could hit the ground running when the plant came online.

The result, Hamilton believes, was a faster, smoother and problem-free plant start-up. “We feel that because we had this simulated, and because all our operations staff have gone through the training, we have probably eliminated any issues related to the start-up of new complex units,” he notes. “We haven’t had any fires, we haven’t had any operator errors...”

Accident avoidance

OTS benefits also extend well beyond plant start-ups to help keep plants running smoothly and more productively once they are up. A strong OTS program helps eliminate errors by even experienced operators that can lead to accidents, product loss or costly plant shutdowns. Continuing refresher training can help keep operator skills up to date for infrequently performed tasks such as start-ups and shutdowns, and also prepare them for the unexpected.

“One of the big things, of course, is that you train your operators in safety scenarios and upset conditions that you hope will never happen in your plant,” says Taher Aftab, senior engineer for dynamic simulation strategy at BP Chemicals, in Naperville, Ill. Simulator training is also particularly useful for practicing plant turnarounds—which today are performed less frequently than in the past—as a way to keep operator skills from getting rusty, Aftab adds.

Aftab oversees OTS activities at a half dozen BP plants worldwide that produce paraxlene and purified terephthalic acid (PTA) ...