Construction
Mitigate fouling in crude unit overhead—Part 2
Up to 50% of the refinery’s entire corrosion expense may occur in the crude unit. The root causes of the fouling and corrosion issues are often linked to the basic unit configuration choices, as ..
Improve solvent recovery in wax production
The solvent-recovery section of the deoiling unit for wax production consumes substantial energy. In this study, the effects of operating conditions (pressure), energy consumption and cost, and proces..
Update temperature control for a Claus unit with neural networks
The Natref oil refinery in Sasolburg, South Africa, had experienced refractory problems in the sulfur recovery unit’s (SRU’s) combustion chamber since startup (Fig. 1). Even though the SRU w..
HP Reliability: Maintain proficiency in root-cause-failure analysis
Earlier in the year, the author attended a series of client and organizers’ presentations at the 2013 TapRooT Summit in Gatlinburg, Tennessee. TapRooT is a structured failure analysis and trouble..
HP Integration Strategies: Operational integrity management at Statoil
Asset-intensive industries continue to suffer from unplanned downtime, failure to meet planned production rates, and too many safety and environmental incidents. Until companies can manage and mitigat..
HP Boxscore Construction Analysis: Canadian LNG: The race to Asia
Canada is the world’s third-largest producer of natural gas, with a gross annual output of 6.4 trillion cubic feet. The vast majority of Canada’s natural gas production derives from conventi..
HP Automation Safety: MTTR: Reality vs. calculation
Many reliability engineers trained before IEC 61508 know the acronym MTTR as “mean time to repair.” I certainly learned that definition. Naturally, I think of the time it takes to repair som..
Shell selects Wood Group for engineering services on Scotland gas, NGL plants
Wood Group employs around 500 people under this contract and provides project management, engineering, construction, commissioning, maintenance support and supply chain management services. Wood Group will also be providing fabric maintenance services, as part of the new contract.
ICA Fluor to revamp Mexichem, Pemex VCM plant
ICA Fluor will be responsible for the engineering, procurement, construction, maintenance and commissioning services to bring the VCM facility to its nameplate capacity of 405,000 tpy, up from its current rate of 200,000 tpy. The project is planned to be completed in the 2015 fourth quarter.
Wison wins construction work on PdVSA refinery deep conversion project
Wison Engineering was awarded a procurement and construction contract by PdVSA for the site preparation for the Puerto la Cruz oil refinery deep conversion project in Venezuela. This represents the largest oil refinery PC project in Latin America acquired by Chinese enterprise to date.
- INEOS to invest €250 MM in Lavera cracker modernization project in France 11/19
- BASF adds ISCC EU certification to certified biomass-balanced methanol portfolio 11/19
- Siam Cement to invest an additional $500 MM in Long Son chemical complex 11/19
- LanzaJet produces first jet fuel from ethanol at a commercial scale 11/19
- Ducor Petrochemicals, Blue Circle Olefins partner to create a fully circular supply chain for polypropylene 11/18
- World's first: Air Liquide’s innovative technology converts ammonia into hydrogen at industrial scale 11/18

