Honeywell Technologies has launched Forge Plant Cognition at Dangote's Lekki refinery, combining refinery data with engineering expertise and NVIDIA and Dell technology, with a preliminary estimate of more than $60 million in gross annual operational benefit at full capacity.
Honeywell Technologies has launched Forge Plant Cognition, an industrial AI platform built with NVIDIA AI and accelerated computing and Dell Technologies infrastructure, with its first deployment at Dangote's petroleum refinery in Lekki, Nigeria, one of the world's largest single-train refineries.
The platform combines real-time operating data, engineering knowledge and Honeywell UOP process expertise with physics-based models to identify production constraints, detect emerging equipment problems and recommend corrective actions. Honeywell estimates the optimisation could deliver more than 29 cents a barrel at Lekki, which at full-capacity throughput would mean more than $60 million in gross operational benefit a year for that facility.
Honeywell is already helping Dangote expand the refinery's capacity from 650,000 barrels a day to 1.4 million barrels a day within three years, and the new platform is meant to support that expansion while building local capability. Dangote chief executive David Bird said the company chose the platform for its industrial expertise and differentiated AI capabilities, and Honeywell says the tools will support Dangote's goal of a workforce that is 70 percent Nigerian.
The $60 million figure needs careful handling: Honeywell itself states it is a preliminary estimate, calculated gross of implementation costs, not guaranteed, and specific to the Lekki facility, with actual results depending on configuration, operating conditions, crude slate, utilisation, data quality, product margins and customer implementation. A Nigerian business report corroborates the same 29-cent and $60 million figures and the preliminary status, though it puts the refinery's current nameplate at 700,000 barrels a day rather than Honeywell's 650,000, so this story uses Honeywell's figure for current capacity and treats the 1.4 million target, on which both agree, as the expansion goal.
The stakes for Nigeria are direct: the Lekki refinery is central to the country's effort to refine more of its own fuel rather than import refined products, and a working AI layer that squeezes more throughput and fewer unplanned stoppages from the same plant matters more than a new headline capacity figure. Honeywell has also been selected to support Dangote's planned mega-refinery in Lamu County, Kenya, so whether the Lekki numbers land anywhere near the preliminary estimate will shape how far this industrial AI model travels beyond one plant.