Equipment
FCCU catalyst reformulations: Reducing risk and guaranteeing value with collaboration/testing
Hellenic Petroleum S.A.’s Aspropyrgos refinery is located near Athens, Greece. It has a total refining capacity of approximately 7.5 MMtpy and a Nelson complexity index of 9.7. The refinery was built in 1958 and has undergone several upgrades, including the installation of a fluid catalytic cracking unit (FCCU).
A new liquid-phase isomerization process for xylene loop debottleneck and energy savings
In a typical xylene loop, C<sub>8</sub> aromatics are fractionated out of a heavy reformate C<sub>8</sub>+ aromatics stream and collected in the xylene column overhead. Then, paraxylene (PX) from the C<sub>8</sub> aromatics stream is recovered as product—usually by an adsorption or crystallization process—in the PX recovery section.
Can ammonia be a future energy storage solution?
Ammonia is well known as a fertilizer. However, it is also a potential carbon-free fuel and an excellent solution for storage of renewable electricity, especially if the syngas needed for producing the ammonia is made by electrolysis.
Business Trends: The ins and outs of construction contracts
Industrial construction projects are becoming larger and more complex, with shorter schedules. To meet these challenging requirements, such construction projects are often executed by multiple entities located in different countries that may have different business objectives.
Digital: Better maintenance through better data
When I talk to professionals in the refining and petrochemical businesses, they are always interested in how new technologies can improve operational efficiency, make plants safer and increase profitability.
Executive Viewpoint: Succeeding against cyber attacks
No doubt exists that the added connectivity that modern control and automation systems deliver offers a myriad of benefits. By embedding computing within the process and utilizing edge and cloud technologies, it can provide greater visibility. It creates a digital thread for the plant and allows both equipment and the processes to be analyzed, as well as giving prescriptive advice.
Reliability: When slow-rolling machines can cause failures, and how to avoid them
All the book learning in the world will fail if we do not use common sense. We could also say that we need to think things through and should recognize that intuitive logic can lead us astray. If that sounds like semantic banter, let us zero in on three practical field examples that illustrate the issues at hand.
How changes to functional safety standards can optimize fire and gas detection
ANSI/ISA-84 is one of the most influential standards in functional safety and has been a driver for instrumented process safety improvements over the last 20 yr. It is a comprehensive norm covering a wide range of aspects related to functional safety in process industries, including the entire life cycle of designing, implementing and operating safety systems.
Rethink fired heater design for emissions
As environmental regulations are becoming more stringent on reduced nitrogen oxide and carbon monoxide emissions, burner designs are changing to meet revised regulations. The heater design must complement the chosen burner for optimal performance. Although design duty is considered to be the main focus of the heater design, the range of heater operation and its impact on heater safety and emissions needs are often neglected.
Reliability: Improve condition monitoring with shock pulse technology
Shock pulse technology is generally well known to vibration analysts and reliability technicians. A handheld combination of sensor and display meter would typically be used to detect discontinuities in bearings and would respond to the impact of two masses. The resulting shockwaves will create a shock pulse of a certain magnitude that commonly manifests itself at a particular repeat frequency. The respective magnitude of relevant excursions and their trends can be observed by the person entrusted with the monitoring task.
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