About Us

Process Consulting Services has been in business for more than twenty-five years. In recent years, we have become the global refining industry leader in crude/vacuum, FCC, and other refinery units—then 2020 happened. While the ongoing global disruption does not change our focus or client base, it does change our clients’ needs.

When Process Consulting Services started twenty-five years ago, our business was troubleshooting, optimization, training, and process design. Troubleshooting and optimization shaped our view that process design and equipment expertise are essential to refinery profitability. Our training courses focused on the process and equipment fundamentals that refinery personnel use to improve their profitability. Process design work for focused projects allowed us to apply our expertise and decades of experience to the task of developing reliable and constructible revamp and grassroots projects.

In 2021, Process Consulting Services is still helping our clients with major capital projects but, as the 2020 disruption has shown, there is an increasing need to balance our clients’ strategic and tactical needs. Although we still have major capital project capacity to deliver grassroots and revamp projects, we believe that shifting to a more nimble footing will set our company up for continued success over the next twenty-five years.

The PCS Difference

Our approach really is different. Process Consulting Services engineers are hands-on. Whether for focused projects, major capital projects, troubleshooting, optimization, or training, our methodology relies on field data, process know-how, fundamental equipment knowledge, and application of technology.

Our engineers start most projects outside: gathering data from operating refinery units with our own precision tools. That field data grounds our use of engineering tools including process models, equipment models and CFD. In addition to the major commercial tools, we use an arsenal of proprietary tools for specific items like ejector systems, heater hot spot analysis, four-pass trays, etc.

Expertise & Experience

Dozens of new and revamped units, operating at many global refinery sites, attest to our engineering process, expertise, and experience. For example, satisfied repeat customers return for revamps of multiple crude/vacuum units or even for several successive revamps of the same crude/vacuum unit.

At Process Consulting Services, we consistently deliver reliable designs that give our clients the flexibility they need to process their desired crude feedstocks. Our engineers are specialists in their fields. We have been designing crude and vacuum units day in and day out for many years. Because our core group of engineers have worked on many different units over the years, we are able to incorporate years of institutional learning into our designs and specifications. Our designs lead to maximum yield of high value products, minimum energy consumption, optimum product quality, and the flexibility needed to process opportunity crudes. We do not believe that it is possible to have a robust, reliable, and profitable design without the right process flow scheme and equipment specifications.

In much of the world today refiners want to process heavy crudes such as Canadian Oil Sands, Venezuelan, and Middle East crudes. In the United States, light, tight sands crudes such as Eagle Ford offer increased profitability for refiners. In any case, these crudes are difficult to process. Heavy, high TAN, viscous crudes present one set of challenges, whereas light crudes containing solids, drilling fluids, phosphate esters, waxes and other contaminants offer another set of challenges and often lead to six month run lengths. Each category of crude has unique characteristics. Process Consulting Services understands the challenges associated with different crudes from around the world. Experience and lessons learned from past jobs make our process and equipment design superior and allow our clients to overcome the problems associated with different crudes to achieve their run length and product quality goals.

For questions about our services or designs, call us at 713-665-7046

Background

Since 1994, through the ups and downs of the refining cycle, Process Consulting Services has been in business helping our clients improve their profitability. Over the past twenty-five years, we have worked on more than 100 crude-vacuum units around the globe. We have also completed many projects in lube vacuum, FCC, delayed coker, visbreaker, saturate gas plant, and product treating units. Our projects range in size from 5 Kbpsd to 380 Kbpsd and total capital investment of less than $10 MM US to more than $400 MM US. Regardless of the size or complexity of the project, our focus is on developing a robust process flow scheme and reliable equipment designs. In this era of increasingly difficult to process opportunity crudes, it is our expertise gleaned from years of experience with different crudes that differentiates us from our competitors and allows us to consistently improve our clients' reliability and profitability.

Process Consulting Services’ main concerns on any project are successful startup and profitable operation. Our clients hire us to apply our expertise to increase their profits. Process and equipment design is our livelihood, and we strive to consistently deliver quality work on time and to exceed our clients' expectations.

OUR PROVEN METHODS

Process Consulting Services’ process flow schemes reflect the specific and unique needs of each unit. We believe that thoughtful designs deliver more value than rote “cookbook” approaches. Creative revamp designs are possible because we handle all major equipment in-house. Long turnaround times caused by over-reliance on equipment vendors limits options and slows progress.

Our revamps always begin with a comprehensive test run to establish major constraints and operating parameters. Grassroots designs draw on the know-how gleaned from our 20 years’ worth of test run measurements and subsequent analysis of many operating units.

Although we use industry-standard design tools extensively, real unit performance depends on sound process flow schemes and equipment designs derived from the knowledge of what works and what doesn’t work in the real world. Because we know what needs to be done, execution is efficient and overall engineering costs are reduced.

Process Consulting Services is focused on results rather than billable man-hours that run up engineering costs. Thus, work is performed only on a lump-sum basis. The time devoted to a given job may be long or short, but what our clients pay for is not an expenditure of hours, it is for results that improve their bottom line.

Technology

Modern technology increases our understanding of unit performance and equipment design, and powerful computer programs form an important part of our design process. This being said, we understand that technology cannot serve as a crutch for fundamentally poor process flow schemes. Furthermore, our many years of experience allow us to identify and compensate for the situations where simulations do not match the real world.

Every day, we use PRO/II, HYSYS, HTRI Xchanger Suite, and FRNC-5 as part of our work. Based on many years of experience and extensive research, we have also developed proprietary programs to ensure that our designs are efficient and reliable. More importantly, our engineers incorporate lessons learned with regards to what works and what doesn't work.

To develop an even deeper understanding of process equipment, Process Consulting Services has made a substantial investment in the hardware and software necessary to perform detailed computational fluid dynamics (CFD). CFD allows us to understand complex flow dynamics within equipment to identify the reason for failures or to implement changes to increase performance. This capability has proven powerful for equipment troubleshooting and for identifying creative, cost-effective ways to increase equipment capacity.