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Recommended guidelines can help prevent fires caused by static electricity

Newson Gale: O’Brien, M.

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 ..

Mitigate fouling in crude unit overhead—Part 2

CH2M Hill: Sloley, A. W.

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

CSIR-Indian Institute of Petroleum: Garg, M. O.  |  Kumar, S.  |  Nanoti, S. M.  |  Ghosh, P.

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

North-West University, School of Chemical and Minerals Engineering: Schabort, C. J.  |  Neomagus, H. W. J. P.

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

Hydrocarbon Processing Staff: Bloch, Heinz P.

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

ARC Advisory Group: Reynolds, P.

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

exida LLC: Goble, W.

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 Industry Perspectives: Is it too early to be optimistic for 2014?

Hydrocarbon Processing Staff: Romanow, Stephany

The increased availability of natural gas supplies are redefining energy conditions. New natural gas reserves are shifting the order for producing nations. Shale gas reserves, once difficult to extrac..

Chemicals group Clariant opens German R&D hub

The new center will house the departments for intellectual property management and new business development. As the corporation’s global hub, the CIC will ensure the coordination of Clariant’s world-wide R&D network, which includes centers across Europe, North America, Brazil, Japan, India and China.

Osaka Gas Chemicals to acquire Jacobi Carbons

Jacobi is the world’s largest manufacturer and distributor of coconut shell activated carbon. The transaction, which has an enterprise value of $400 million, is expected to close in January 2014.