Storage tanks are massive pieces of equipment that hold inside them valuable commodities which are also most of the time toxic and/or flammable. Storage tanks work as fully integrated in production and sales, making them a critical component of facility operation. Since storage tanks are crucial equipment that have high risk outcomes in case they fail, inspection and maintenance of them are areas that hold great importance.

Traditionally, monitoring the condition of storage tanks involved periodic manual inspections, which could be time-consuming, error-prone, and limited in scope. Manual inspections involve tank drainage and significant downtime. Moreover, traditional paper-based reports do not present a full picture of the tank condition.

In addition to that, these paper-based reports contain hundreds of pages of results, which often makes them quite time-inefficient for the asset owner to analyze in detail. Moreover, since every periodic inspection results in a new report, and tank farms often contains dozens if not hundreds of tanks, not to mention other types of assets, handling reports may become overwhelming.

In today’s world, digital transformation has become a key driver of innovation and efficiency across various industries. And thanks to digital transformation, messy paper-based results can be digitally transformed into soft data. And AIS Field works to ensure your storage tank inspection and maintenance procedures are digitally transformed. In addition to helping in the gathering of Quality Data with its robotic solutions, AIS Field’s advanced software solutions help in transforming conventional bookkeeping into digital bookkeeping. Unlike paper-based data, processing software-based data is incredibly easy.

For example, for any given tank, time based inspection data can be quickly obtained from the software and then processed via analytical tools to make possible efficient predictive maintenance. In this post, we briefly go over some of the many benefits of digital transformation in storage tanks. We also demonstrate how AIS Field helps you in achieving digital transformation and making use of its benefits.

What is Digital Transformation?

Digital Transformation is the process of integrating digital technologies into areas of a business or organization, fundamentally changing how it operates. Digital Transformation in heavy industrial asset management has the potential to decrease costs, increase efficiency, ensure safer operation, mitigate environmental risks and reduce downtime. For industrial asset management such as storage tank management, there are various ways in which digitalization can be utilized to increase efficiency and safety.

For example, with smart sensors, around-the-clock monitoring of parameters such as temperature and pressure is possible. Many data analytics and AI tools may be utilized to make possible predictive maintenance and lifecycle
management. Moreover, maybe one of the most promising and crucial methods of digital transformation is Digital Twin software, which provides a virtual representation or simulation of a physical asset. Digital twins provide a baseline upon which all the other digital and AI technologies can be built. AIS Field has developed its own Digital Twin software to present its robotic NDT reports.

Avoid Potential Failures With Digital Transformation

Digital transformation practices have many benefits in preventing failures before they even occur. Digital Twin software we provide with our NDT reports helps customers in multiple ways.

Firstly, thanks to Digital Twin integrated reports, customers can, instead of going through hundreds of pages of reports, see all the results in one software screen and navigate in a point and click fashion.

Secondly, Digital Twin software makes possible indefinite storage of all the old data without using any physical space. Not only does this prevent any data from ever being lost and makes finding data significantly easier, but it also makes processing time-based data incredibly easy.

As mentioned, Digital Twin software can be easily integrated with any data processing method including machine learning models. Digital transformation with Digital Twin software saves data collection and safeguarding from being a personal endeavor and transforms it into a corporation-level procedure. Change in personnel will have no effect on the integrity of data since any authorized personnel can easily reach data and understand where and when each data point in the Digital Twin software belongs. That way, predictive maintenance is made much simpler and easier to achieve thanks to plentiful Quality Data being available to everyone.

How to Digitalize Tank Maintenance Process?

Digital Twin software provides the baseline for safer and more optimized storage tank maintenance. Once robust tank inspection data is obtained and Digital Twin is constructed, a full mapping of all the critical zones will be available. Thanks to the visual interface, the problematic areas can be easily seen. The abundance of data and the ease of integrating analytical methods will make predictive maintenance much simpler to carry out.

Digital Twin software will accompany the tank all through its service life. Every inspection and maintenance, no matter how minor, will be saved into the software. That way, a very large amount of data will be available for the planning team. Different types of data from different points of asset life can be processed via a large variety of methods to make possible efficient lifecycle management.

How AIS Field can Help You?

First step of digital transformation is data collection. Any digital analytical method will need high quality data. In fact, one of the most important advantages of digital analytical methods is that they can handle big data. However, even the creation of big data requires advanced methods.

For example, it is well-known fact that human operators cannot physically collect which would make asset mapping possible. On the other hands, robots, thanks to their automated movement and high-performance sensors, are able to obtain tens of thousands of data points from asset surface.

That way, mapping is possible. AIS Field’s RUVI Oildiver and RUVI Wallker robots are able to map large surfaces very quickly and collect robust, accurate and plentiful data. AIS Field provides the tools to present and analyze these data as well. To present these large amounts of data in a user friendly way and store it indefinitely, we utilize our Digital Twin software. To analyze this data and reach predictive maintenance results, we utilize advanced data analytics, including cutting-edge machine learning models.