Europe
Consider a systematic approach for safety monitoring
Any facility dealing with bulk hydrocarbons must monitor safety conditions at all times. A leak of flammable or toxic material can occur at any time, and explosion is an ever-present threat when combu..
Case history: Quantifying the benefits of alarm management
By using timely alarms that lead an operator to corrective actions, the goals are to improve plant safety, to increase efficiency and to reduce environmental constraint limit violations.
Protect processing plants against jet fires
The impact of jet fires on process equipment is critical, and it is important to examine possible design considerations that can mitigate many of the jet fire consequences.
Recommended guidelines can help prevent fires caused by static electricity
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
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
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
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
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
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
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..

- BASF and Yara end joint project for low-carbon ammonia at U.S. Gulf Coast 8/26
- U.S. jet fuel consumption growth slows after air travel recovers from pandemic slowdown 8/26
- ExxonMobil announces Group III base stocks production 8/26
- Saudi Arabia and India were biggest buyers of Russian fuel oil, VGO in July 8/26
- Russia raises August oil export plan after drone strikes continue to disrupt refineries 8/26
- Foundation Alloy debuts Molyclast—A new standard in high-performance refractory alloys 8/26