Environment & Safety Gas Processing/LNG Maintenance & Reliability Petrochemicals Process Control Process Optimization Project Management Refining

Management

HP People

ABB’s board of directors unanimously nominated Peter Voser to succeed Hubertus von Grünberg as chairman.

Total inks new labor agreement with global union

A committee made up of members from Total and IndustriALL will meet annually to ensure that the agreement has been implemented and to identify and promote best practices.

Shale gas drives new opportunities for US downstream

Technip Stone & Webster Process Technology: Maller, A.  |  Dharia, D.  |  Gbordzoe, E.
Axens: Lambert, N.

This shift to lighter feeds for the SC will reduce the future availability of other petrochemical feedstocks—in particular, propylene.

DCS migration: Lessons learned

TOTAL Port Arthur refinery: Conley, R.

In 2005, TOTAL’s Port Arthur refinery (PAR), like many present-day refining and petrochemical facilities, found itself with an obsolete, at-capacity distributed control system (DCS). As shown in ..

Avoid counterproductive project management practices

Hydrocarbon Processing Staff: Bloch, Heinz P.

For many years, reliability-focused engineers have observed flawed procurement processes for mechanical equipment. Many requirements are supposedly aimed at the lowest possible lifecycle cost; however..

Use a schedule confidence tool to manage project risk

CH2M Hill: Shaw, J. L.

On most industrial projects, the baseline schedule completion date and the indicated schedule completion date are typically the same, unless the schedule is forcibly re-baselined. Key learnings have indicated that a reevaluation of the scope, schedule and budget is essential.

Fine-tune monitoring of critical compressors

PROGNOST Systems GmbH: Loeken, J.

In this case history, a new monitoring system was installed on a critical service hyper compressor for a Middle East (ME) ethylene complex. This unit supported two 400 Mton polyethylene (PE) units; do..

Consider technology to reduce compressor vibration and noise problems

Dresser-Rand: Liu, Z.

Industrial centrifugal compressors installed in hydrocarbon processing industry (HPI) complexes absorb significant amounts of mechanical power when compressing gases. A small part of the mechanical en..

Without reliability, there can be no safety

Oil Industry Safety Directorate: Dutta, H.

Reliability and safety are complimentary concepts. For instance, unless process reliability at a plant is extraordinary, safety cannot be assured. Achieving the highest level of safety at a processing..

HP Automation Strategies: Control on the wire(less)

ARC Advisory Group: Gupta, M. S.

Since the industrial revolution, process/industrial control had relied on tightly coupled systems to transmit control signals. Industrial plants have used “modern” control via wired electron..