Americas
HP Construction: North America
Jacobs Engineering Group Inc. has a contract from Methanex Corp. to provide engineering, procurement and construction services for a methanol production facility in Louisiana. Officials estimate the c..
HP Construction: South America
A subsidiary of Foster Wheeler AG’s Global Engineering and Construction Group has a contract from Petrobras for a world-scale grassroots gas-to-chemicals complex—Complexo Gás-Quími..
HP Reliability: Equipment life extension involves upgrades
Every plant wants to get more service life from site machinery. Since about 1990, quite a number of start-up consulting companies have formed to advise clients on equipment life extension. These compa..
HP Integration Strategies: Recent trends shape the future of DCS
Several trends have already impacted the distributed control system (DCS) market and are likely to continue over the next few years. These include both product- and technology-related trends and gener..
HP Water Management: Consider software tools for water reuse projects
The hydrocarbon processing industry needs reliable and economic sources of water for present and future operations. Ensuring a sustainable water supply requires a focused effort to evaluate the qualit..
Update hydrocracking reactor controls for improved reliability
The industry consultant believes auto-quench, excursion control and bed-outlet layers should join auto-depressure as industry-best practice for all hydrocrackers.
Use a systematized approach of good practices in pygas hydrogenation via APC
APC with inferential modeling was successfully applied to pygas hydrogenation units. The lengthening of the catalyst run length limits downtime for both the pygas unit and upstream units such as the steam cracker.
Why don’t we properly train control engineers?
While there are managers in the process industry that see training control engineers as a “no-brainer,” these are very much in the minority. They may send staff on courses covering configura..
Consider automated fault detection systems to improve facility reliability
Automated fault detection and diagnosis systems (AFDDSs) are well established in many consumer and industrial sectors.1 The conventional limit-value based (high/low alarms) fault detection and diagnos..
Optimize desulfurization of gasoline via advanced process control techniques
This case history describes the development of the inferential models used in open-loop and closed-loop applications, laboratory and analyzer update mechanisms, and APC model generation.
- Transitional Industries and CFEnergia sign feedstock supply contract for $3.3-B Pacifico Mexinol project 2/17
- Neste and World Fuel Services extend partnership, expanding SAF availability at more than 100 airports in Europe 2/17
- U.S. refined product exports by tanker increase to > 6.3 MMbpd in January 2/17
- Japan's oil and gas independence climbs to highest since 2009 2/17
- Dangote signs $400-MM equipment deal with China's XCMG to speed up refinery expansion 2/17
- Former Lukoil-owned ISAB refinery in Sicily exits crisis procedure 2/17

