Safety
Improve refinery compressor performance with a reengineered rotor
When a scheduled maintenance task at a refinery in Germany revealed the need for a new rotor assembly, working with local independent specialists enabled the team responsible to improve the design and performance of the compressor without further interruption to service.
Take steps to achieve lubrication maintainability
Do not accept that what the OEM delivered, or how the equipment has been configured for the past 30 years, must be maintained into the future. Optimize yourPM program and look for maintainability improvements to ensure that the right work can be performed in the right way and at the right time.
Failure prevention—The ultimate asset management strategy
The primary cause for losses and lost opportunities at refineries, chemical complexes, pipeline networks and gas processing facilities is equipment failures.
Lifting of US crude export ban will impact process safety management
Since the Arab oil embargo in the 1970s, the US government has restricted the export of crude oil to curb dependence on crude oil imports.
Editorial Comment: Maintenance spending to jump in 2016 as refiners catch up with turnarounds
The number of scheduled refinery turnarounds in North America is anticipated to rise this year after declining sharply in 2015, as refiners delayed maintenance shutdowns to capitalize on abundant quantities of low-priced feedstock.
Reliability: Principles are more important than strategies
A number of US oil refineries have recently asked the question, “When should an equipment repair be classified as rework?”
Innovations
Planned shutdowns, turnarounds and outages (STOs) are often scheduled for preventive maintenance and new equipment installation that must be performed to keep a plant running and in regulatory compliance.
Innovative design configurations for flare system reliability
The function of a flare system in a refinery or chemical plant is to collect gases released during an overpressure scenario, typically resulting from a plant upset.
In-depth and preemptive front-end planning yields positive project results
Despite the challenges that major projects can present (short deadlines, budget constraints and overruns, unforeseen problems onsite and tension throughout executive teams), they can also prove to be a win-win for both the owner and the engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) firm.
Reliability: Transform ODR-OPPM into a worthwhile initiative
ODR, which stands for operator-driven reliability, has recently morphed into a new arrangement of letters: OPPM.
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