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

Safety

Prevent buckling of tanks with external rafters

Suncor Energy Inc.: Tharakan, J.

Most cone roof tanks are designed with roof-supporting structures inside the tank.

Keep a floating roof on an even keel

Emerson Automation Solutions: Skogberg, P.

Users of large liquid hydrocarbon storage tanks at refineries and terminals must solve a variety of problems and make trade-offs related to vapor emissions and general structural integrity for these massive containers.

Combating normalization of deviance within your organization

Contributing Writer: Caudill, J.

NASA’s 1986 Space Shuttle Challenger disaster investigation brought the term “normalization of deviance” into the spotlight.

Composite ionic liquid alkylation technology gives high product yield and selectivity

China University of Petroleum: Liu, Z.  |  Zhang, R.  |  Meng, X.  |  Liu, H.  |  Xu, C.
Beijing Zhongshi Aojie Petroleum Technology Co. Ltd.: Zhang, X.
Well Resources Inc.: Chung, W.

Global sentiment has been moving toward a call to develop innovative technologies that address environmental preservation and limit the use of hazardous materials.

How the “LLF” condition monitoring technique can improve manufactured product profitability

Bahrain Petroleum Co. (Bapco): Das, S.

Technological advances have allowed predictive maintenance (i.e., condition-based maintenance) to overtake preventive maintenance in plant operations. “Look, listen and feel (LLF)” is a condition monitoring technique that improves the reliability of equipment and machinery in manifolds.

Metallurgy solution to prevent polythionic acid stress corrosion cracking in hydroprocessing

Honeywell UOP: Hoehn, R. K.  |  Bradley, S. A.  |  Mucek, M. W.
Nippon Steel and Sumitomo Metal Corp.: Anada, H.  |  Osuki, T.

Hydrotreating is a staple process found in nearly every refinery. The process removes undesirable feed contaminants, such as sulfur, nitrogen and metals, and saturates olefins and/or aromatics to produce high-quality products.

Editorial Comment: It’s all in the makeup of things

Hydrocarbon Processing Staff: Nichols, Lee

This issue of <i>Hydrocarbon Processing</i> features a topic that has been addressed in sections of the magazine for several decades, but has never been a focal point of the publication. That topic is materials manufacturing.

Use your data to its full potential to prevent outages

HIMA Americas, Inc.: Creef, B.

In a process plant, the safety system is responsible for the protection of personnel, resources and the environment, by taking the plant to a safe state in the event of a fault. However, is the system capable of contributing more to the plant’s uptime and profitability?

Evaluate structural stiffness for piping stress analysis

Reliance Engineering Group (REG): Choudhury, M. G.  |  Tripathi, R.

Hydrocarbon plants use a system of pipes of various sizes, pressures and temperatures. Sometimes these pipes have pulsating flows that result in piping system vibration. These piping systems must be designed for a high degree of reliability, which requires a comprehensive piping stress analysis for thermal, sustained, occasional and dynamic loading conditions.

Engineering Case Histories—Case 99: Pooling knowledge and experience builds personal and team success

Consulting Engineer: Sofronas, A.

With the help of an excellent mentor, I became adept at analyzing equipment and structures at the start of my career, using analytical techniques.