March 2012

This innovative, continuous supervising method collects real-time data on important asset health

Boost refinery reliability by controlling potential amine recycle loops

Automating the detection process and controlling applications in real time dramatically boosts performance

This case history investigates equipment failure in a glycol unit

Improve furnace temperature and sulfur recovery

New tools enable refiners to fine-tune refinery configuration and maximize profits

Linear program (LP) modeling can provide an unbiased, cost-based preview of a refinery or petrochemical plant design

Understanding what is happening can lead to a solution

Improve operations by avoiding buildup of sensible duty or by using baffles

Many factors are involved in achieving ‘safe, reliable and cost-efficient’ turnarounds

A blend of art and science with a history worth recounting

Because our memories are imperfect and we don’t want to risk making mistakes, we learned to jot down brief reminder notes on paper. Some people call it a cheat sheet, or a checklist. An airline p..

In the future, increased demands for high-quality fresh water supplies will translate into voluntary and, ultimately, regulatory mandates. These constraints will require facilities to limit or to redu..

In this issue of HPInsight, workforce, fuel quality and capacity overhang are a few of the challenges that the hydrocarbon processing industry (HPI) must address and resolve. Expansion of the refining..

US demand grows for wood-plastic compositeUS demand for wood-plastic composite and plastic lumber is projected to advance by over 13% per year to $5.4 billion in 2015, creating a market for 2.6 billio..

Global energy demand will continue to grow over the next 20 years, albeit at a slowing annual rate, fueled by economic and population growth in non-OECD countries. Increased energy efficiency and stro..

Filtering CO2 from factory smokestacks is a necessary, but expensive, part of many manufacturing processes. However, a collaborative research team from the National Institute of Standards and Technolo..

UOP LLC, a Honeywell company, will provide technology to produce propylene at Dow Chemical Co.’s production site in Texas. Dow Texas Operations will use Honeywell UOP C3 Oleflex technology in a n..

Exterran Holdings, Inc., has a contract from Petrobras for the design, fabrication and sale of a major natural gas processing and treating facility in Itau, Bolivia. The facility is a dew-point gas pr..

BASF will build a single-train 300,000 metric-tpy production plant for toluene diisocyanate (TDI) at its site in Ludwigshafen, Germany. It will also expand additional plants for TDI precursors by cons..

Qatargas has signed an engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contract with Samsung Engineering Ltd. for a diesel hydrotreater (DHT) unit that will treat 54,000 bpsd of diesel, from high-sulf..

Total is consolidating its positions in petrochemicals in Asia with a new expansion and upgrading project for the Daesan complex in South Korea, which the group owns with Samsung as part of the Samsun..

IVD vacuum vessel aids in corrosion prevention   Fig. 1. The IVD vacuum vessel   applies aluminum coatings for   corrosion protection.  Thermal processing systems manufac..

Top-entering mixer seal Chemineer, Inc.’s new brochure provides information on its ChemSeal top-entering mixer seal. The brochure describes the seal’s technical details and identifies i..

Portable flowmeter offers rapid response The new DXN portable ultrasonic flow and heat meter is said to be built on a truly unique, rugged hardware platform that leverages modern micro-processing..