April 2007

Integrating an economy-of-scale extraction unit can yield naphtha suitable for ethylene production

The world of methanol is very complex; so what is the future of this commodity product?

Combining process and equipment analysis with vendor solutions can minimize capital spending

New catalytic pretreatment process removes troublesome olefinic materials, thus improving quality of aromatic streams

Korea's largest chemical company uses innovative modeling techniques to design high-performance reactors

Some suppliers are automatically issuing control system updates and other important notifications

Using these calculations can predict natural gas density and improve flowrates

A comparison of approximation methods shows which is more accurate over a wide range of Re values

This important parameter is often overlooked in day-to-day operations

Here's how the causes of unusual problems with this tank were determined

Here are the prerequisites, pitfalls and vision for the future

Any discussion of the use of plant operating data with management or operational staff will quickly spawn some variation on the above cliché--and the cliché is correct. The 1980s saw the evo..

Equipment manufacturers and design contractors are often slow to adopt reliability upgrade and energy-conservation components in their standard offers. Fearful that buyers are making selections on low..

Competing in the process industries requires highly effective use of assets. An automation system is an essential ingredient of effective and profitable production operations. Most plants use a dispar..

The southeast of Europe can feel more or less impenetrable to an English speaker based in the snowy north, so I was pleased to bump into my old friend Ozren in Italy the other day. Ozren lives in Serb..

The impending rapid increase in the production and consumption of liquefied natural gas (LNG) is widely recognized as a major factor that will affect the natural gas markets in many regions of the wor..

Employees are important contributors to maintaining systems reliability. The increasing complexity of process control systems and reduction in staffing levels demand better-educated and more proficien..

The liquefied natural gas (LNG) sector is one of the fastest growing sectors of the energy market and is expected to double between 2005 and 2010, delivering around 40% of global gas supply growth. A ..

Energy-efficient process upgrades bitumen OrCrude, owned by Ormat, is a proprietary process to upgrade bitumen and heavy oil into synthetic crude oil. As shown in Fig. 1, the process consists of three..

Software supports enterprise quality initiatives Version 8.0 of QI Analyst software's new enterprise-level quality management functions are said to enable proactive management of process variations in..

Chevron Corp. received approval from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to build the proposed Casotte Landing regasification facility in Jackson County, Mississippi, adjacent to the Chevron Pasc..

Jacobs Engineering Group Inc. has a contract to provide conceptual engineering studies and owner engineering support for an extension of Gaz de France's (GDF's) liquified natural gas (LNG) terminal in..

Foster Wheeler Energy Ltd. and Foster Wheeler (Nigeria) Ltd., in a joint venture with Chiyoda Corp., have a contract with Nigeria LNG Ltd. (NLNG) for the project specification, or front-end engineerin..

Jacobs Engineering Group Inc. has a contract from Al Rajhi Petrochemical Group to provide front-end engineering services for a $50 million benzene recovery plant at Al-Jubail, Saudi Arabia. The contra..

Mitsui Chemicals, Inc., has an agreement with Thai Polypropylene Co., Ltd., a wholly owned subsidiary of SCG Chemicals Co., Ltd., to license its polypropylene (PP) manufacturing technology. This will ..

Heat exchangers improve biodiesel processing Tranter's line of all-welded plate heat exchangers claim to improve operations in high-capacity biodiesel plants. These gasketless units are compatible wi..

    Examining role of ethanolBiofuels, especially ethanol, have gained strong interest in the transport..

 The Middle East remains a global center of oil industry activity from the upstream to downstream. Exploration and development activities have received a major boost from the past few years of hi..

The Environmental Integrity Project (EIP) recently released a report critical of the refining industry that is based on a flawed assessment, according to the National Petrochemical & Refiners Associat..

Owner/operators are continuing to invest heavily in refining and petrochemical facilities. This level of activity is stretching the capabilities of suppliers and more than ever requires engineering co..

Tightening global oil supply and regional squeezing of gas supply coupled with demand growth have resulted in increasing interest in exploiting unconventional hydrocarbons. Analysts with Wood Mackenzi..

Cold weather and the resulting higher demand for heating fuels in the US reduced petroleum inventories (both crude and product) more than expected in February. Spot prices for crude oil and natural ga..

The demand for energy is rising rapidly and will continue to do so in the coming decades. US government projections are that by 2030 global energy consumption will grow over 50%, with 70% of that grow..

Corrections In the February 2007 article "Optimize your hydrocracking operations," there was an error in Fig. 1. In the figure, the de-metalized oil (DMO) unit was misnamed as the coker. HP apologize..