November 2022
Special Focus: Process Controls, Instrumentation and Automation
The measurement of moisture or humidity is very important in most industries, including the petrochemicals sector. Excess moisture in instrument air can cause pipes to rust or pneumatic equipment to malfunction.
Plant control system modernizations that are necessary to meet today’s goals and strategies often come with organizational hurdles.
Sensors, equipment and devices are becoming more intelligent, opening the door for autonomous operations, which is the ability for machines and processes to run while self-diagnosing and handling problems.
For most refinery facility managers, the demands of running plants efficiently, meeting environmental regulations and maximizing returns on product specifications challenge even the most disciplined professionals.
Process Optimization
The performance of refinery operations depends on the stable operation of the plant.
Plant Design, Engineering, Construction and Commissioning
A convergence of events has disrupted the construction industry.
Maintenance and Reliability
Steam turbines are essential for successful operations in refining and petrochemical plants, such as at the wet gas compressor and regenerator air blower of a fluidized catalytic cracking unit (FCCU).
Most industrial assets operating at elevated temperatures require thermal insulation for energy conservation, thermal protection or process stabilization.
Obsolescence is one of the most detrimental and worrisome issues in manufacturing units. This is predominantly because of rapid advancements in technology.
Heat Transfer
Hydrogen has long been considered a high-value product, but not typically as a fuel for fired equipment.
Electric heaters are used in the process industries as an alternative to fired heaters or process heaters—where the heating medium is either steam or any heating fluid—for some specific applications where the process duties are low but fluids are heated to high temperature.
Plant Safety & Environment
Equipment malfunction or an unplanned shutdown of a sulfur recovery unit (SRU) can have a significant effect on a production company’s profitability, along with an equally serious impact on personnel safety and the environment.
Columns
On October 12, <ital>Hydrocarbon Processing</ital> hosted its annual <ital>HP</ital> Awards at the Houstonian Hotel, Club and Spa in Houston, Texas.
Among the cryptographic technologies under development in various industries, homomorphic encryption (HE) possesses the attractive feature of allowing computation within the encrypted domain. Encrypted data cannot only be transferred and stored, but also used in the secure encrypted state.
Trends and Resources
In late September, <ital>Hydrocarbon Processing</ital> hosted the International Refining and Petrochemical Conference (IRPC) in Houston, Texas (U.S.)—the first in-person IRPC in nearly 3 yr.
Anchorage Investments has shortlisted four companies to build its $2-B Anchor Benitoite petrochemical complex project in Ain Sokhna, Egypt.
Anyone who has encountered foam clamshells for restaurant takeout food, white or green “peanut” packing to cushion shipments, or those thick foam blocks for protecting boxed furniture is familiar with expanded polystyrene (EPS).
- Valero Energy beats Q2 profit estimates as refining margins improve 7/24
- SWISS becomes world’s first airline to integrate Synhelion solar fuel into its flight operations 7/24
- Finland's Neste tops earnings forecast on soaring SAF sales 7/24
- Shell restarts hydrodesulphurization unit at Pernis oil refinery after unplanned outage 7/24
- Orlen's Unipetrol will start commissioning ethylene unit after power outage experienced earlier in July 7/24
- Dow forecasts sales below estimates, slashes dividend as downturn takes a toll 7/24
