Traded materials

All materials which are bought and sold by plants are traded materials.

Traded materials are used for categorizing different types of material handled by AVEVA Unified Supply Chain. This may often be for reporting purposes. Where materials can be bought from different sources that potentially have different properties, each of these differently source materials is often a separate traded material.

Example: You may purchase alkylate from OilCom and also from PetroCorp. Each company produces alkylate with slightly different properties. Therefore these are separate feedstocks. To include the amount of each type of alkylate in a report, it is easier to treat these alkylates as separate traded materials. These traded materials would probably have the same underlying material type.

Traded materials bought by plants include crude oils, ethanol, natural gas and so on. Traded materials sold by plants include Jet A1, EN228 95 gasoline, atmospheric residue, coker gas oil and so on.

In order for a plant to buy a material and process it, the traded material must be associated with a feedstock. In fact, it is feedstocks which are purchased by plants, not traded materials. The feedstock definition contains all of the information necessary to handle the processing of the material.

If the feedstock is a crude oil, the feedstock definition is usually synchronized from other software tools such as Assay, and in this case the feedstock definition allows the material to be separated in a distillation unit. If the feedstock is an imported material such as gas oil, the feedstock definition must define all the bulk properties necessary to process or blend that material.

In order for a plant to sell a material, the traded material must be associated with a grade. In fact, it is grades which are sold by plants, not traded materials. The grade defines the property limits (if any) that the traded material must meet in order to be saleable. When the traded material is the result of blending many intermediate products, like gasoline, the final blend must meet these limits. When the traded material is an intermediate product, like atmospheric residue, any property constraints defined for the grade are met during optimisation by changing the ratio of feedstocks to the source unit, for example by changing the crude mix.

Manage traded materials

To add a traded material:

1. Do either of the following:

   • Click Add Material in the Traded Materials group of the Home ribbon tab.

   • Right click anywhere in the table and choose Add Traded Material from the context menu.

     A new row is added to the table.

2. Edit the properties of the traded material in the new row, such as its Name, the Material Type it belongs to and the Share where you intend to publish it.

   Tip: You can also create a traded material as part of the creation of a new feedstock or grade.
   After creating a new feedstock or a new grade, click the arrow button in the Traded Material cell of the new row, and choose Create New from the top of the traded material list.

To edit a traded material (only if the traded material Permission is set to Editable) just change the values in the corresponding row. Cells that you cannot edit, such as those in the Last Modified column, have a light gray background.

To delete one or more traded materials (only if the traded material Permission is set to Editable):

3. Select the traded materials you want to delete.

4. Do either of the following:

   • Click Delete Material in the Traded Materials group of the Home ribbon tab.

   • Right-click on the selected traded materials and choose Remove Traded Materials from the context menu.

5. Click Yes in the confirmation dialog.

Warning: Before deleting a traded material, ensure that any grades or feedstocks using the material are either deleted or have their associated traded material changed.

To create a copy of one or more traded materials:

6. Select the traded materials you want to copy.

7. Do either of the following:

   • Click Copy Material in the Traded Materials group of the Home ribbon tab.

   • Right-click on the selected traded materials and choose Copy Traded Materials from the context menu.

   New rows are added to the table, with copies of the selected traded materials.

8. Make any edits to the name, description and target share of the new copies.

Note: The copies have the same underlying material types as the original traded materials.