Environment & Safety Gas Processing/LNG Maintenance & Reliability Petrochemicals Process Control Process Optimization Project Management Refining

Refining

Design of very-high-flow coefficient centrifugal compressor stages

Elliott Group: Jariwala, V.

Centrifugal compressors are widely used in the oil and gas and petrochemical industries, with more than 15,000 operating in the U.S. alone.

Industry Metrics

Hydrocarbon Processing Staff: Rhodes, Mike

High product inventory levels and weak heating oil demand continued to weigh on U.S. refining economics. European product markets, except gasoil, exhibited positive performance backed by firm exports and heavy turnarounds in the Middle East.

Middle East: Saudi Arabia eyes major growth in petrochemicals market

Contributing Writer: Gerden, E.

Saudi Arabia aims to become a major player in the global petrochemicals market within the next several years, with plans to increase domestic and foreign production and expand its exports.

Optimization: Plan before main air blower disaster strikes

Aggreko: Chauvin, J.  |  Fischbach, A.

Weeks before a planned overhaul of its coker unit, a synthetic crude plant’s main air blower for the furnace failed, throwing the engineers’ plans into disarray.

Case study: Extend tube life in a waste heat boiler

SK Energy: Lee, S.  |  Kim, E.

The sulfur recovery unit (SRU) separates sulfur from sulfur compounds.

Develop more efficient capital projects with an EPC 4.0 strategy

AVEVA: Sabharwal, A.

Digital technologies are being widely adopted across nearly every industry. Industrial companies are moving as far away as possible from manual, document-centric processes and replacing them with cloud services, digital solutions and data-centric strategies.

Engineering propylene: Value unlocking with the PDH process

Bechtel India: Qureshi, V.  |  Singh, R.  |  Chate, V.

Propylene is at the core of the petrochemical industry, with the synthesis of its numerous derivatives finding greater application in industries from textile to automobile, cosmetics and beyond. Propylene is also a foundation block/intermediate for numerous chemicals, from isopropanol to polypropylene (a widely used synthetic material) to gasoline octane enhancers.

Advances in the OCC process for propylene production

Sinopec Shanghai Research Institute of Petrochemical Technology: Teng, J.  |  Shi, J.  |  Xie, Z.

Driven by rising demand for polypropylene, cumene, acrylonitrile and other derivatives, increasing global demand is seen for propylene.

Business Trends: Rethinking the refining and petrochemicals industries

Burns & McDonnell: Price, J.

Crude oil has been the fundamental element of transportation fuel for many decades.

Apply ceramic coatings to extend radiant tube life in process heaters

IGS-Cetek: Bacon, J.

Process tubes in refining applications are typically steel alloy (ASTM A335 P22, P5 or P9), which contain 2.25%, 5% and 9% Cr, respectively. These grades oxidize at operating temperatures, and scale will grow continuously on the surface, often reaching 2 mm in thickness in higher-temperature/high-heat-flux units. The layers of scale are very insulating and represent a significant barrier to conductive heat transfer to the process.