By 
By Olusegun Oruame
The Dangote Refinery is a monster smart enterprise designed as an advanced refinery project that signposts Nigeria’s entry into Industry 4.0; an intelligent tech-driven industrial setting.
RELATED: Future of Nigeria is in strong corporate players – Dangote, Glo, Zenith, BUA, Konga, Flutterwave, others
Launched in May 2023 with financing in excess of US$19 billion, the facility is prepped to play strong in the extremely “competitive, capital- and asset-intensive oil and gas industry”.
The Dangote Refinery is Africa’s biggest oil refinery and the world’s single-train facility. A 650,000 barrels per day (bpd) integrated refinery and petrochemical project in the Lekki Free Zone near Lagos, the Dangote Refinery & Fertiliser Projects will significantly reduce Nigeria’s reliance on imported energy and bring with it more than 30,000 jobs.
There’s more. The infrastructure facilities include a pipeline system, access roads, tank storage facilities, crude and product-handling facilities; a marine terminal, including a breakwater, jetty and harbour, has also been developed as part of the project.
The refinery complex will house a fertiliser plant to utilise the refinery by-products as raw materials. Supportive facilities include an administrative building, guardhouses, fire station, and pump stations among others.
Dangote enterprise is an intelligent refinery
All of these are woven together through expansive digitalization. The entire Dangote enterprise is an intelligent refinery that fully leverages emerging technologies including “IoT for data gathering, cloud computing infrastructure for hosting this data, artificial intelligence and machine learning models to process this data and provide actionable insights,” MSME Africa noted.
Adding: “With digital infrastructure, greenfield refineries like those being built by the Dangote and BUA Groups will have visibility throughout the value chain, helping them to accurately learn about impending changes and take decisions to adapt quickly.”
A team of technology experts led by Head of IT, Dangote Refinery & Fertiliser Projects, K.V. N Rao will be implementing a host of IT practices, including the latest in assistance software, and leveraging data for operational intelligence. The team will be managing the advanced production and operation technology; and believes the enterprise is kitted intelligently enough to drive the portfolio of expectations as Nigeria’s most ‘technology-driven factory.’
With its heavy investment in technology, the profile of Dangote Refinery & Fertiliser Projects comes out readily as having “capabilities such as predictive maintenance, remote operations centers, dynamic power selection mode, omnichannel retail, and connected service fields” – all of which are associated with smart refineries.
The refinery hopes to drive efficiency at least 40 times over non-smart factories and save production cost by well over 55%, exceedingly ahead any of Nigeria’s four moribund refineries when at optimum production.
Production design details
The integrated refinery and petrochemical project will process a variety of light and medium grades of crude to produce Euro-V quality clean fuels including gasoline and diesel as well as jet fuel and polypropylene.
The geographical location of the refinery is ideal for easy transhipment of the refined petroleum products to international markets.
The design details of the complex also shows that the processing facilities at the refinery include a crude distillation unit (CDU) and associated facilities, a mild hydrocracking (MHC) unit, a residual fluid catalytic cracking (RFCC) unit, a naphtha hydrotreater, and a gasoline hydrodesulfurisation (HDS) unit as well as alkylation units.
The refinery complex will also house sulphur recovery and hydrogen generation facilities and a polypropylene unit. Comprising two steam methane reformer (SMR) units, the hydrogen generation facility will generate 200,000Nm³/h of hydrogen and steam to produce sulphur-free fuels.
Smart factory is Nigeria’s historical entry into Industry 4.0
Financed to be smart, the Dangote Refinery meets the criteria of a factory designed on Industry 4.0. According to IBM, “Industry 4.0 is revolutionizing the way companies manufacture, improve and distribute their products. Manufacturers are integrating new technologies, including Internet of Things (IoT), cloud computing and analytics, and AI and machine learning into their production facilities and throughout their operations.”
What does this mean for Nigeria’s industrial landscape? The Dangote Refinery has completely altered the game for good. Apart from being the largest private sector investment, it is the most technologically advanced and has set the historical moment for Nigeria’s entry into Industry 4.0. Only the BUA Refinery may make this exulted list when it is launched in the months ahead.
Smart means incorporating digital tools to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of refinery operations in a way that enhance productivity and greater optimization. This puts Dangote Refinery in the league of the Saudi Arabian national oil company, Saudi Aramco, known to leverage the most advanced IT systems to control, monitor and manage all of its upstream, midstream and downstream operations.
But smart also means an unexplored window. New opportunities for business and collaborations have been opened for local IT solutions and digital infrastructure providers who must deliver on the 24/7 requirements of the Dangote Refinery. In a way, the presence of this smart factory will steadily change the profile of the numerous IT support management solution companies not only within Lekki axis but all of Lagos and rest of the country.
Olusegun Oruame (www.segunoruame.com) Journalist | Writer | Tech & Media Entrepreneur| is founding editor at IT Edge News.Africa
