Equipment
Optimize slop-wax bed height in the vacuum unit
The vacuum distillation (VD) unit in the petroleum refinery separates the heavier fraction of crude oil from the atmospheric distillation unit (ADU) into light vacuum gasoil (LVGO) and heavy VGO (HVGO..
HP Construction Profile: US Midwest refinery nears completion of major modernization project
In early July 2013, BP announced that it has completed the commissioning and startup of a new, 250,000-bpd crude distillation unit at the Whiting refinery, marking a major achievement in the multi-bil..
Streamline plant information for brownfield assets
Brownfield assets suffer from handling large volumes of unstructured information. Often, such projects do not have up-to-date/as-maintained 3D models, data warehouses or integrated operation systems, ..
Optimize your compressor maintenance program
One deviation alone might not be enough to bring on a compressor failure, but, when several more deviations combine, the failure risk is known to increase exponentially.
Case history: Failure analysis of a syngas compressor
A first-stage impeller in a synthetic gas compressor failed after 20 years of service. The compressor is a six-stage centrifugal compressor driven by a steam turbine. This case history discusses the i..
Improve pressure drop calculations for saturated water lines
When saturated water flows through pipes and components, it flashes—thus increasing its specific volume and limiting the fluid flowrate. Due to these conditions, the calculation and design for pi..
HP Reliability: Four-stage, low-flow process centrifugal compressor can fill important industry gaps
In the 1970s and 1980s, multistage centrifugal compressors in the 3,000 acfm (about 5,000m3/hr) and lower flow ranges were largely confined to instrument and plant air duties. Three stages with interc..
HP Integration Strategies: Consider procedural automation at a commercial-scale pilot plant
“All processes are batch processes to some degree. Even in ‘continuous’ process plants, processing units will need to be shut down at some point and then restarted to resume production...
HP Engineering Case Histories: Case 74: How to determine impact forces when troubleshooting
When troubleshooting failures, it is not unusual for the metallurgical report to indicate that the failure was the result of an impact type of force. The investigator who receives this information mus..
HP Industry Perspectives: US oil and gas executives energized for the year ahead
A recent survey of US executives by the KPMG Global Energy Institute supports growing optimism in the domestic energy and manufacturing industries. Much of the renewed enthusiasm is strongly linked to..
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