For 15 years, the refinery used the same water treatment specification and got the same results: 30–40 heat exchanger replacements a year, about 6 exchanger cleanings, and a production cut of about 13% every summer. Industrial Water Advisory rewrote the RFP around performance KPIs instead of chemistry volumes, built an accountability plan, and let the refinery award more than one supplier on the same site to drive competition, comparison, and accountability.
The refinery had come to accept an estimated $48M a year in capital and lost profit as the normal cost of operating: exchanger replacements, repeated cleanings, and a summer rate cut every year.
Earlier consultants had recommended long chemistry lists for every water system: boiler, cooling, wastewater, and RO. The failures, cleanings, and lost production continued.
The real questions were contractual. How do you write an RFP that lets suppliers provide only the chemistry the systems need, managed to a performance target? How do you hold them accountable? And what are the refinery’s options when performance is off target?
A new operations manager asked Industrial Water Advisory to review the chemical program and the failure history.
After reviewing the chemistry and operating conditions, we delivered an analysis and engineering report showing that the specified chemistry could not provide effective corrosion and deposition control at the site’s operating conditions.
Advanced saturation and corrosion modeling defined the risk and the types of programs known to deliver performance under those conditions. With that proof, the refinery asked IWA to rewrite the tender and help manage the bid.
The specification, not the supplier. The RFP bought chemistry by volume and price, not by result. A long product list with maximum-usage caps cannot match the treatment to each system’s metallurgy, water, and operating limits, and no performance requirement meant nobody was measured on corrosion, deposition, or microbiological control.
The result was predictable. The program in the specification could not control corrosion and deposition at the site’s conditions, so exchangers failed, fouled, and limited production every summer, while every bid cycle repeated the same specification and the same outcome.
Estimate basis: 30 exchanger replacements at ~$100K each, 6 cleanings at ~$50K each, and a 13% summer rate cut on ~250,000 bbl/d for 92 days at ~$15/bbl lost margin. Actual value depends on site throughput and refining margin. Details generalized to protect client confidentiality.
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Independent tender design, bid evaluation, and supplier accountability programs for refineries, petrochemical plants, and heavy industry. We write the requirements, score the bids, and set up the measurement. No chemistry sold, no equipment sold.