Environment & Safety
Case history: Quantifying the benefits of alarm management
By using timely alarms that lead an operator to corrective actions, the goals are to improve plant safety, to increase efficiency and to reduce environmental constraint limit violations.
Protect processing plants against jet fires
The impact of jet fires on process equipment is critical, and it is important to examine possible design considerations that can mitigate many of the jet fire consequences.
Recommended guidelines can help prevent fires caused by static electricity
For any person working in the oil and gas industry who is responsible for the safety of employees, colleagues, plant equipment and property, one of the most potentially confusing aspects in providing ..
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 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..
HP Innovations
ClearSign marks NOx reduction milestoneClearSign Combustion Corp. has cost-effectively reduced NOx to a record-setting 3 ppm. The results indicate that ClearSign’s technology may overcome many of..
Qatar Petroleum to open new college for industry safety, emergency training
The Ras Laffan Emergency & Safety College will offer internationally recognized as well as professional vocational qualifications courses and programs in Fire Safety Engineering and Fire Safety Management.
Global HPI spending likely to jump 15% in 2014
Newfound optimism stems from rising availability of gas supplies in several nations, rich shale reserves in North America, and a new expansion wave for petrochemicals.

- CNOOC completes construction on $2.9-B, 1.8-MMtpy refinery-petrochemicals integrated complex in east China 8/22
- bp's Whiting refinery (U.S.) continues to flare days after severe thunderstorm 8/22
- Bachmann introduces latest version M-Target for Simulink 8/22
- U.S. to rule on biofuel waivers, but big oil refiners may need to wait 8/22
- Chinese independent refiner Hongrun buys Canadian, Brazilian crude 8/22
- thyssenkrupp Uhde completes pre-FEED for HAMR Energy’s renewable fuels project in Australia 8/21