Cumulus Digital Systems has partnered with Bechtel to deploy a bolted joint management system during the construction of Shell’s new-build Pennsylvania Petrochemicals Complex. When finished, PPC will produce 1.6 million tonnes of polyethylene per year using low-cost ethane from shale gas producers in the Marcellus and Utica basins.
Cumulus’ Smart Torque System (STS) includes a cloud-hosted control center and database of activities to be executed on site. A mobile application guides workers through each step of the workflow, communicating data collected from Bluetooth-enabled torque wenches and other tools. Target torque values are sent over the wireless connection and the actual values achieved returned in real time to the control center.
Poor bolted joint management is said to cause leaks that emit over 170 million metric tons of greenhouse gas annually. In addition to enforcing engineering controls and improving productivity, the deployment has reduced leak rates to 0.1%, ‘a 100 fold reduction on the industry average’.
The piping scope consisted of more than 120,000 flanged connections at the facility, with over 173,800 completed torque records. Construction began in 2016, with piping assembly ramping up in 2019 with most assembly work completed earlier this year. Cumulus developed an API to allow Bechtel to upload plant data and feedback to the EPC’s construction information management systems.
STS was originally developed by Shell at its innovation center in Boston, Massachusetts to prevent leaks and improve productivity for Shell’s capital projects and turnarounds. After early success internally, Shell spun STS out as Cumulus Digital Systems in 2018.
Cumulus digitalizes manual work that is ‘mission-critical, high volume, and difficult to automate’ improving the quality and productivity of safety-critical workflows across a range of industries. Cumulus also claims to be addressing the construction industry workforce shortage, with some 400,000 positions reported as unfilled late last year.
A Gastech white paper, ‘Deploying
A Digital Bolted Joint Management System At Scale To Prevent Leaks And
Enforce Engineering Controls’ can be downloaded from Cumulus.
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