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Project Management: Efficiently expanding a specialty chemical company
COIM, a specialty chemical company, decided to expand its production capacity in the U.S. to supplement growing market and economy.
Managing dark data and visualizing your digital twin
Today’s tools are often specialized for a certain type of task; however, they often lack the connectivity that would enable the easy comparison and cross-reference of asset information. Engineering tools are well suited for design and build phases, but may be less suited for use in operations and maintenance.
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.
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Motion Industries Inc. has named Chris Pacer as VP of the company’s Central Group. Mr. Pacer has spent the last 22 yr with Motion Industries in various key roles after joining the company as a certified fluid power specialist. He was promoted to Branch Manager of the various markets within Northern Ohio and then joined the company’s corporate accounts team before being promoted to his latest position of Detroit Division VP and General Manager. In that role, Mr. Pacer was responsible for the further development and overall growth of 22 branch operations and one service center.
Executive Viewpoint: Fuels and petrochemicals will continue to help humanity thrive
A 15-yr rise in U.S. exports of refined products continued in 2019 with the nation exporting more than ever, underscoring the importance of these products to fueling a growing world. In the latter half of the last decade, U.S. petrochemical production capacity increased—with more than $20 B invested in domestic petrochemical projects in the last 2 yr alone—and exports of petrochemicals and petrochemical feedstocks rose, as well.
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).
Inspection: A practical approach to internal inspection of pressure equipment
Internal inspections of pressure equipment involve a full inspection of the equipment. Inspection engineers and inspectors depend heavily on internal inspections to retrieve useful data, which includes information on active degradation mechanisms, corrosion rates, remaining equipment life, failure occurrences and failure expectations, among other critical details.
Project Management: How human intelligence and AI are driving project planning in the oil and gas industry
The science of project planning has something of a tenuous reputation. How often do large oil and gas capital expenditure (CAPEX) projects really come in according to plan? Almost never. Indeed, 30% of respondents to a 2018 PWC survey said they had experienced cost overruns of 10%–50% on their Middle East capital projects.
Digital: How digital tools improve access to device information
Welcome to the future! The plant runs fully automated; robots glide silently back and forth, ensuring an optimized process; and your maintenance technician—with a few keystrokes—can tell you exactly how each piece of equipment is running. The promise of the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) has been delivered.
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.

- Vioneo awards Lummus polypropylene contract for world's first industrial scale fossil-free plastics from green methanol facility 8/19
- Research: Developing an energy-saving, carbon-capturing method for making ethylene glycol 8/19
- Emerson announced the release of its new Rosemount 3144S temperature transmitter 8/19
- Chinese refiners sweep up Russian oil after Indian demand falls 8/19
- Indonesia plans quick-to-build oil refineries for U.S. crude 8/19
- Russia's ultra low-sulfur diesel exports from Primorsk scheduled to rise in August 8/19