SOx Emissions Inventory "On-Line": A Case Study in a Brazilian Refinery
PETROBRAS, the largest Brazilian Petroleum Company, tuned to world-wide trends and sensitive to the need of environmental pointers, defined its environmental performance information policy using a collection of environmental indicators. By using these indicators PETROBRAS aims to evaluate corporate EHS (Environment, Health and Operation Security).
The first environmental pointer established for atmosphere emissions was the AEISOX (Atmospheric Emissions Index of SOx) that is a corporative emissions inventory of this pollutant. The refineries, because of its process, are the mainly contributors with the SOx emissions in the company.
One of the PETROBRAS refineries, the Refinaria Presidente Bernardes de Cubatão (RPBC) implanted the AEISOX on line. Using the PI (Plant Information) software, accessible to all refineries employees, the SOx emission inventory is calculated “on line” for all sources, allowing the instantaneous evaluation of the operation. In this way, the pointer could be analyzed continuously, allowing the correcting action in some sources and consequently improving the SOx emissions reduction.
The purposes with the “on line” SOx emissions inventory, besides to improve the reduction of this pollutant, is to share the information among the employes and improve the commitment with the EHS performance.