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Rotating Equipment

Reveal the unmonitored risks in your rotating equipment—Part 1

Bently Nevada, a Baker Hughes Business: O’Connor, D.  |  Gutierrez, J.

On December 15, 2002, an anomalous event occurred in a steam turbine of Unit 2 at the South Texas Project Electric Generating Station, a pressurized water reactor (PWR) nuclear reactor near Bay City, Texas. The ensuing investigation concluded that a blade was ejected from a low-pressure stage, and detailed inspections revealed additional cracked blades in several stages.

Reliability: Things rarely heard at reliability conferences

Hydrocarbon Processing Staff: Bloch, Heinz P.

We can only guess how many reliability conferences we have attended since accepting job offers in the refining or chemical processing industries. In my case, starting in 1965, it is somewhere between 60 and 80. If, in each of these conferences I listened to six presentations, the number of sessions attended is perhaps 400.

Business Trends: EPC 2030: Five vital characteristics that will define the EPC firm of tomorrow

AspenTech: Donnelly, P.

The state of the global engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) industry can accurately be described as “challenging.” Operating in an environment of volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous conditions, EPC firms are facing unsustainable levels of stress.

Digital: Better maintenance through better data

Accruent: Eichelberger, N.

When I talk to professionals in the refining and petrochemical businesses, they are always interested in how new technologies can improve operational efficiency, make plants safer and increase profitability.

Equipment: Rotating equipment repair: The technology-driven shift from preventive to predictive

Persistence Market Research: Pandita, R.

Rotating equipment repair vendors are looking at a future that can be described as both exciting and challenging. As predictive maintenance (PdM) makes deeper inroads, vendors have been forced to rethink their legacy repair offerings.

Reliability: When slow-rolling machines can cause failures, and how to avoid them

Hydrocarbon Processing Staff: Bloch, Heinz P.

All the book learning in the world will fail if we do not use common sense. We could also say that we need to think things through and should recognize that intuitive logic can lead us astray. If that sounds like semantic banter, let us zero in on three practical field examples that illustrate the issues at hand.

Using ball valves in high-temperature applications

Emerson Automation Solutions: Jablonski, J.  |  Helfer, W.

Ball valves are often an economical solution for controlling flows in refinery high-temperature applications, but their application can be complex, particularly in high-temperature uses.

Hydrocarbon Processing Awards Winners

<i>Hydrocarbon Processing,</i> the downstream processing sector’s leading technical publication, has announced the winners for its third annual awards. The <i>HP</i> Awards celebrate innovative technologies and people that have been instrumental in improving facility operations over the past year.

Engineering Case Histories: Case 108—Failure analysis computations differ from design

Consulting Engineer: Sofronas, A.

When equipment fails, it indicates weak points and usually exposes the cause(s) of the failure.

Reliability: Viewing issues out of context may be a waste of time

Hydrocarbon Processing Staff: Bloch, Heinz P.

An alternative to the above title would be “Test your rotating equipment engineers’ IQ.”