August 2005

The equivalent line length method can be used to estimate equipment pressure drop at different operating conditions

This case study illustrates the method

Use these guidelines to improve reliability and efficiency

Advanced systems provide more data and increase reliability

This refinery significantly increased bearing life

Use these methods to reduce mean-time-to-repair and increase availability

The problem can greatly reduce component fatigue life

Elevation changes affect the pressure profile and phase behavior; such conditions impact product loading

In this case history, unconventional maintenance techniques stopped chronic leaking for an olefin's heat-exchanger circuit

Microcoulometry can provide quantitative analysis for halogenated compounds

New developments raise the profitability and reliability for existing and grassroots units

This column has often expressed the belief that process plants are lacking in applying fundamentals and that chasing after high-tech solutions makes little sense if a plant has not mastered the basics..

Condition monitoring for rotating equipment has been identified as a major potential application for wireless sensor networks in manufacturing. Only a small percentage of the rotating equipment instal..

Shell's marketers in Germany and elsewhere are doing some pretty cool stuff with their gasoline. And then there're surprising, some might say, slightly crazy things happening in biogasoline in Sweden ..

Deaerators remove dissolved oxygen from boiler feedwater to prevent corrosion of downstream components such as feedwater heaters, economizers and boilers. Dissolved oxygen has retrograde solubility, i..

New service package improves monomer production The Building Blocks business unit of Degussa AG has developed a new service package for monomers production facilities. SiYPro – Simplify Your Pr..

Flowmeter solution to small-line flow measurement The ST75 series flowmeter features wireless IR link communications. This is said to be ideal for flowmeters installed in..

Chevron Global Refining is upgrading its Pascagoula, Mississippi, refinery's fluid catalytic cracking unit (FCCU) capacity by about 25% from its current 63,000 bpd. This will increase the refinery's g..

ABB has a $360,000 consulting agreement with PDVSA to improve electrical motors and pumps reliability in the Complejo Refinador Paraguaná (CRP) facility in Venezuela. ABB Performance Services con..

Uhde Inventa-Fischer and Zhejiang Euro-Asia Film Materials Co. Ltd. have started what is claimed to be the first and largest multi-line BOPET direct film casting line in Shaoxing, Peoples Republic of ..

The Turkish Petroleum Refineries Corp. (Tüpras) has selected Axens for its gasoline pool upgrading project. Axens will provide its Benfree and Prime-G+ technologies as part of a program to produc..

Bayer MaterialScience AG is opening a toluene diisocyanate (TDI) production facility in Caojing, China. It is scheduled to begin operation in 2009 with a 160,000 tpy capacity. The project is part of..

Reduce system costs with perfluoroelastomer seals In a new brochure, "Optimize Total System Cost," DuPont Dow Elastomers claims that its Kalrez perfluoroelastomer seals can save engineers 10% to 20..

  Short-term energy markets outlook The WTI crude oil pri..

Significant increases in natural gas and oil prices have captured the attention of business developers, consumers and headlines. Not so visible, however, have been the recent increases in the cost of ..

The perceived competition between LNG and Fischer-Tropsch (F-T) GTL is neither for markets (LNG serves the utilities market; F-T GTL serves the transportation fuels markets), nor for gas resources, sa..

BP's recently announced hydrogen power station project could have spin-off benefits for sites that rely heavily on hydrotreating or sulfur removal or are based within greenhouse gas emissions trading ..

Global industrial valve sales were about $40 billion in 2004. By 2010, annual sales will exceed $50 billion, says a new report by the McIlvaine Company (www.mcilvainecompany.com). A number of publicly..

Despite current fears that oil will soon "run out," global oil production capacity is actually set to increase dramatically over the rest of this decade, according to a new report by Cambridge Energy ..

What is the future of the US Gulf Coast petrochemical industry? According to Avi Nash, market analyst and formerly a partner with Goldman Sachs, the US Gulf Coast petrochemical industry will be viable..

The European Commission's Water Framework Directive (WFD) was intended to replace a patchwork of other legislation, often overlapping and even contradictory, on various aspects of water management and..