Maintenance & Reliability
HP Brief
LyondellBasell plans to expand North American ethylene capacityLyondellBasell will raise its ethylene capacity in North America by 18% in coming years through several debottlenecking projects. Locatio..
HP Innovations: Innovations
Flowmeter uses Coriolis force in measurementThe Sitrans FC430 flowmeter from Siemens AG is capable of measuring liquids and gases using the Coriolis principle. Flows can be measured with a precision o..
Overcome barriers to proper planning and scheduling
Planning and scheduling must work hand-in-hand for a turnaround, outage or shutdown to be executed to budget and schedule. Unless proper diligence is given up-front to planning and scheduling, no amou..
Update on US refinery production outages
Unplanned and planned production outages at US refineries, as reported by Dow Jones Newswires.
Monitor and minimize corrosion in high-TAN crude processing
In addition to inhibitor dosing, intensive corrosion monitoring and analytical tests play a major role in equipment and piping health monitoring and in analyzing stream properties online.
Mitigate reactor failures due to graphitization
Graphitization occurs in carbon steel (CS) reactors in high-temperature service (> 455°C). As discussed in this case history, the shell of a methyl tertiary butyl ether (MTBE) reactor became s..
Corrosion under insulation is a hidden problem
Corrosion under insulation (CUI) is one of the costliest avoidable problems facing the hydrocarbon processing industry (HPI) today. CUI afflicts refineries—specifically, the steel piping, storage..
Operator response to alarms is an important protection layer
Operator response to alarms is important layers of protection (LOP). When implemented with good design, engineering and maintenance practices, an alarm can help reduce the safety integrity level (SIL)..
HP Reliability: How the best lubricant provides added value
In November 2012, a highly competent lubrication engineer and I met again at the ExxonMobil Maintenance and Productivity Improvement Symposium in San Antonio, Texas. We talked about the small, but pes..
HP Integration Strategies: Wireless sensing benefits from new technology
Wireless sensing is the most important new technology to emerge in decades for process measurement and equipment monitoring applications. For this reason alone, it has attracted the sustained attentio..
- Exploring ethanol: Maersk to test 50/50 ethanol-methanol bunker fuel 12/8
- BASF introduces low-VOC polyurethane catalyst Lupragen® N 208 12/8
- Idemitsu Kosan to be first Japanese refiner to supply biofuels to shipping industry 12/8
- China refiner moves forward with expansion despite sanctions 12/8
- Air Products and Yara to partner on low-emission ammonia projects 12/8
- Opinion: G7’s Russian oil tanker ban shows teeth, but bite is in doubt 12/8
