Brazilian oil company Petrobras is like many heavy industrial firms today looking for smaller wins that can add up to big emissions savings over time. The state-owned company launched an IIoT initiative called LeakSpy to understand the causes of flaring, the practice of burning off excess natural gas.
To accomplish this, the company decided to monitor gas releases from its pressure safety valves (PSVs) by deploying Emerson’s Rosemount 708 Wireless Acoustic Transmitters. The first 114 monitoring points identified leaks that would have released 20,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent over six months, saving the company $220,000 while dramatically reducing emissions, said Marcio Donnangelo, global business development manager for wireless technologies at Emerson.
Donnangelo led a session on the Petrobras wins during the second day of the Emerson Exchange 2025 conference in San Antonio.
The project aligned with the company’s goal of reducing operational emissions 30% by 2030 vs. 2015 levels and to achieve net zero by 2050, added Adelino Dias, a business process systems analyst at Petrobras.
The company determined that 50% of the gas it was flaring in its refineries were of unknown origin, and the PSVs were major contributors to releases, Dias said. To fully understand the extent of PSV emissions, the company needed continuous monitoring of the valves. Following a lengthy government-mandated procurement process, Petrobras selected Emerson to provide the continuous-monitoring system.
From scheduled checks to continuous monitoring
Having remote sensing capabilities was critical because of the cost and safety issues involved in manual data collection. Hands-on PSV inspections are time consuming and require scaffolding to reach the valves high atop refinery equipment, Donnangelo explained.
Petrobras established several main requirements for its LeakSpy project selection. The company sought a solution that offered ease of installation with WirelessHART capability and no process shutdowns during implementation; scalability suitable for PSV and steam-trap applications of any size; long-span, power-module transmitters that would eliminate the need for local AC or DC power; and a dedicated software platform designed specifically for the task at hand.
Emerson met these requirements, so the company initiated an eight-month prequalification process, as mandated by government regulators, Dias said. During this period, the company tested Emerson’s IIoT-based technologies, including PRV-monitoring, steam-trap monitoring and IT architecture and cybersecurity before performing a field trial at Petrobras’ Presidente Bernardes de Cubatão (RPBC) refinery in Sao Paulo, Brazil.
For the initial project, the company deployed Emerson transmitters to 114 PSVs and six steam traps, 35 WirelessHART repeaters and seven Emerson Wireless 1410S Gateways and Emerson Wireless 781S Smart Antennas to six processing units, according to Dias. The deployment also included Emerson Plantweb Insight data analysis software and Emerson’s Aspen InfoPlus.21 historian dashboards for analytical and reporting information.
The PSVs and steam traps being monitored were located at different parts of the refinery, including 38 at two different treatment units, catalytic cracking, catalytic reform, distillation and spherical tanks for storing liquified petroleum gas (LPG).
Dashboard pinpoints troublesome valves and traps
Within the dashboard, the company receives time-series data that displays information about problematic PSVs, so the operations team can address the issues directly rather than wasting time locating their sources, Donnangelo said. A detected event initiates an email notification to the appropriate person within the plant identifying the problem PSV. The event notification will also display graphical data, including acoustic information, such as background noise.
“Now it's clear that operators spent a lot of time trying to understand where the flare was coming from,” Donnangelo said. Instead, the PSV information helps the operations team quickly assess the root cause of leaks and implement the right strategy to mitigate issues during critical moments. One example included a compressor issue that would have likely gone unnoticed if the team had not received the PSV alert, according to Donnangelo.
The company estimates one particular PSV alert enabled them to resolve an issue in approximately six hours—a dramatic improvement from the six months it would have taken before implementing the LeakSpy project.
On average, this represents a 91% increase in efficiency, considering that a small leakage rate of 3% would have resulted in the loss of 4,000 metric tons of material over the six-month period.
The company also reported several installation benefits by opting for the Emerson platform. This includes an estimated $3 million installation benefit from using WirelessHART technology compared with wired technology. Petrobras also reported a project implementation and start up in 60 days upon product and software availability, which was 80% faster compared with an equivalent wired project.
Moving forward, the company expects to expand the RPBC project by adding 60 more monitoring points to increase the total PSV monitoring installations to 174. The latest Petrobras IIoT initiative currently in the CapEx bid process includes the opportunity to expand PSV monitoring by integrating LeakSpy with nine more Petrobras refineries in Brazil.
