New Software Adds Eight Years to Coke Drum Life
The platform analyzes cycle history to identify the specific operations causing the most cumulative structural degradation.
Updated on Oct. 21, 2026 in Software
Live Poll
Do you trust that new digital monitoring technology makes heavy industrial equipment more reliable?
Akselos has released SPM for Cokers, a software platform that utilizes digital twin technology to monitor coke drum fatigue and wear. The system uses operational data such as cycle history and temperature to calculate the remaining service life of equipment.
Why it matters
Refineries often struggle to balance production throughput with equipment longevity, as coke drums are prone to structural degradation. This software provides the granular data required to optimize operational cycles and extend the lifespan of critical industrial assets.
The software runs on a parametric digital twin utilizing a model with five million degrees of freedom. This architecture processes actual operating temperatures, pressures, and quench timings to assess bulging and crack growth per cycle.
The players
Akselos
An engineering software firm specializing in structural integrity management and digital twin technology for heavy industry.
Pan American Energy
An integrated energy company that served as the site for the operational data study regarding the software.
The details
SPM for Cokers identifies damage mechanisms—specifically fatigue, bulging, and crack growth—by calculating the impact of every operational cycle. By modeling the drum at a high level of physical resolution, the software reports the remaining life for each damage mechanism separately. This allows operators to distinguish between types of stress that would otherwise be treated as a single, opaque risk factor.
Timeline
Akselos released the software on October 20, 2026.
The Tech Race
Refining operations are increasingly shifting from periodic manual inspections to continuous, simulation-based integrity management. This software represents an attempt to move beyond current industry standards by providing distinct life-cycle metrics for specific damage mechanisms.
Refinery operators can begin implementing this digital twin system to optimize the 100 highest-fatigue cycles in their production process. Such optimization is estimated to yield an additional eight years of drum life and defer $17 million in capital costs per pair of drums.
The takeaway
By isolating the 2.2% of cycles that cause the majority of damage, operators can theoretically extend the longevity of aging infrastructure. Future benchmark reports should monitor if these digital twin projections align with actual equipment service-life results over the coming decade.
Further reading
For broader trends in industrial monitoring, see our recent analysis of Software.
Source note: This article includes information reported by Hydrocarbonprocessing.
Live Poll
Do you trust that new digital monitoring technology makes heavy industrial equipment more reliable?
