February 1999

Eliminating 'silos' of information is essential

Refinery is meeting its key business drivers: higher product quality, lower operating costs, increased manufacturing flexibility and improved regulatory compliance

Recent years saw a shift in the control engineering business toward consolidation of companies in the field. During 1998 this trend began to reverse in favor of a proliferation of small independent fi..

More than once, this column has dealt with the importance of training the reliability professional. Thirty-five years ago, my section supervisor at New Jersey-based Exxon Research and Engineering disc..

At the bottom of the barrel – after all the jet fuel, gasoline, diesel, and petrochemical and lube oil feedstocks have been removed at the refinery – there are still the bottoms, residual fu..

It's February; accordingly, many HPI consultants are preparing their forecasts for 1999 and the next few years. From reading the headlines, there are very few surprises, especially for petrochemicals...

You need not look hard within a process plant to find key technical and production personnel who overlook improvement opportunities within industrial water systems. This oversight is often rooted in t..

We talk a lot about "environmental protection" – sometimes, we even do something about it. However, we tend to forget that the adjective environmental means concerning the environment. Conse..

I started working with availability, reliability and maintenance engineering and management in the 1980s. Little was known or published about this side of business operations. Consequently, I set out ..

ABB, Rochester, New York, has formed a new business to develop and market intelligent software products for a wide range of process industries. The intelligent solutions product business will provide ..

Akzo Nobel N.V., Arnhem, the Netherlands, has sold its Plastic Packaging and Laminate and Aluminum Tubes businesses (formerly part of Courtaulds) to a new company financed principally by funds managed..

BOC Gases to build carbon dioxide plant BOC Gases plans to start up a 500 tpd CO2 purification and liquefaction facility in El Segundo, California. The BOC plant will capture and recycle raw CO2 fr..

'Latest science debunks global warming hysteria,' says Patrick J. Michaels, a professor of environmental science at the University of Virginia and a senior fellow in environmental studies at the Cato ..

According to a recent report, European refiners have reduced oil discharges from their facilities. The study, released in December 1998 from CONCAWE, summarizes 1997 survey responses from 105 refineri..

A recent survey of laboratory information management system (LIMS) users in Europe asked LIMS managers to give their insights and experiences. Researchers from a market research firm asked respondents..

A recent overview from SRI Consulting assesses the market outlook for various chemicals. Highlights from two petrochemical overviews of significance to the HPI follow: Butylene. Referred to as bute..

Economic growth will be higher in 1999 than last year, predicts a survey of U.S. purchasing executives from various industries. A significant 68% expect their 1999 revenues to be greater than 1998, fo..

A recent survey by executive search firm Spencer Stuart profiles 65 leading energy companies. The report compares these organizations' board practices to those of the companies in Standard & Poor's 50..

Total expenditures in research and development (R&D) in the U.S. are expected to increase to nearly $236 billion in 1999. This is a jump of 7% over the estimated $221 billion spent in 1998. "Barrin..

The director of statistics for the American Petroleum Institute (API) has characterized 1998 as "one of the toughest years for the U.S. oil and natural gas industry." However, with declines in upstrea..

The North American pressure transmitter market continues to evolve from reliance on conventional transmitters to smart transmitters. A new market study from ARC concludes that "the pace of that transf..

An optimistic outlook from the Hydraulic Institute, Parsippany, New Jersey, forecasts that "an Asian recovery will help push worldwide pump sales to more than $22 billion in 2003." Important industry ..

In this day and age of low crude oil prices, low product prices and, consequently, low operating margins, HPI operating companies are implementing many different strategies to improve overall profitab..