Process Control
Five key innovation concepts to impact frontline engineers in 2020
Gas processing, liquefaction, oil refining, bulk petrochemicals and chemicals plants represent a large population of frontline engineers and technical managers. Their professional lives will become increasingly impacted by the growing adoption of disruptive digital technologies and digital platforms.
Industry Perspectives: The Main Column—Hydrocarbon Processing's new podcast series
In December 2019, <i>Hydrocarbon Processing's</i> launched its new podcast series: The Main Column. The podcast series will feature the latest in hydrocarbon processing industry (HPI) trends, technology developments, engineering and operations.
Editorial Comment: Adopting digital technologies to enhance operations
What is the future of refining and petrochemical operations? One trend that has been the focus of many articles, whitepapers and conference presentations is the digital transformation of the hydrocarbon processing industry (HPI).
Cybersecurity visibility and resilience: Keys to protecting HSE/margins in operations
As digitalization accelerates in today’s downstream refining and petrochemical facilities, operators need to stay ahead of ever-growing cyber vulnerabilities in the operational technology (OT) layer—prime targets for threat actors—that may not be covered by traditional IT safeguards. Unfortunately, too often, that is not the case for a variety of reasons.
APC maintenance scheduling—Part 1
Advanced process control (APC) projects are supervisory programs that are often thought of as a layer of control above the base regulatory control for a process. The benefits of APC include increased throughput, reduced variation, constraint avoidance, etc., and can be combined to represent a daily economic-equivalent benefit for the application—the same anticipated benefit that led to the justification of the APC installation. Several articles report that after 18 mos–24 mos, more than half of APC installations are performing at either pre-installation levels or have been removed.1,2,3 Although diverse reasons exist for the performance shortfall, a primary reason is that the process characteristics drift from those that generated the controller model.
Optimal gas analysis decisions improve ethylene plant operation
One of the most common and important building blocks in the petrochemical industry is ethylene, constituting a huge and fast-growing worldwide industry. Ethylene is an intermediate chemical used to manufacture many commercial products—approximately 200 MMt will be produced in 2020.
Digital: Technologies are advancing industry beyond alarm management
Let’s face it, alarm management is a fully mature body of knowledge. Since the mid-1990s, industry has improved thousands of alarm systems, transforming them from overloaded nuisances to valuable operator tools for abnormal situation detection and response.
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.
Process Safety: Process safety in a connected world
Traditionally, conversations around automation and safety have focused largely on logic solvers and instrumentation. However, new disruptive technologies and a rapid expansion in networking and computing resources have broadened the scope of automation’s reach. These transformative technologies and approaches promise to reduce incidents and increase production in ways industry could only imagine in the past; but while the “pieces” are available, organizational silos and entrenched cultures stand in the way.
- Jinggong Group, Yokogawa sign multi-faceted strategic partnership on mutual business development 6/11
- USA BioEnergy secures long-term feedstock supply for $2.8-B SAF refinery in Texas (U.S.) 6/11
- GameChange Solar secures 450-MWp order for green ammonia project in Oman 6/11
- Russia's offline primary oil refining capacity revised up 21% in July 6/11
- Borouge awards ADNOC L&S 15-year contract to accelerate growth of UAE petrochemical exports 6/11
- TOYOTA GAZOO Racing unveils liquid hydrogen-fueled "GR LH2 Racing Concept" at Le Mans 6/11
