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HP Reliability: Leaders must allocate time for technology updates

Hydrocarbon Processing Staff: Bloch, Heinz P.

Just as a good medical doctor is expected to have wide knowledge on modern treatment options, we would expect reliability professionals to be equally informed on technology advances. There are numerou..

HP Boxscore Construction Analysis: Brazil plans major refinery expansions

Hydrocarbon Processing Staff: Nichols, Lee

Brazil is the largest producer of liquid fuels in South America. However, the country still lacks the installed refining capacity to meet domestic demand for transportation fuels. For this reason, Brazil has a number of refining projects planned and underway.

HP Viewpoint: Renewables from the refiners’ viewpoint

Valero Energy Corp.: Klesse, B.

Recently, I had the opportunity to testify before the US Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, representing our company and our industry that employs approximately 108,000 American workers..

HP Construction Profile: US Midwest refinery nears completion of major modernization project

Hydrocarbon Processing Staff: Romanow, Stephany

In early July 2013, BP announced that it has completed the commissioning and startup of a new, 250,000-bpd crude distillation unit at the Whiting refinery, marking a major achievement in the multi-bil..

Streamline plant information for brownfield assets

Intergraph Corp.: Standish, R.  |  Botterill, E.

Brownfield assets suffer from handling large volumes of unstructured information. Often, such projects do not have up-to-date/as-maintained 3D models, data warehouses or integrated operation systems, ..

LSB lets contract for new Arkansas ammonia plant

LSB Industries reached an agreement with SAIC Constructors to build a 375,000 tpy ammonia plant at an LSB site in El Dorado, Arkansas. The deal provides for SAIC to provide certain engineering services and to manage the construction of the ammonia plant and associated facilities.

Optimize your compressor maintenance program

Consultant: Geitner, F. K.

One deviation alone might not be enough to bring on a compressor failure, but, when several more deviations combine, the failure risk is known to increase exponentially.

Case history: Failure analysis of a syngas compressor

SABIC Technology Centre: van Zyl, G.  |  Al-Zahrani, E.  |  Al-Meshari, A.  |  Al-Haroon, M.

A first-stage impeller in a synthetic gas compressor failed after 20 years of service. The compressor is a six-stage centrifugal compressor driven by a steam turbine. This case history discusses the i..

Improve pressure drop calculations for saturated water lines

When saturated water flows through pipes and components, it flashes—thus increasing its specific volume and limiting the fluid flowrate. Due to these conditions, the calculation and design for pi..

HP Reliability: Four-stage, low-flow process centrifugal compressor can fill important industry gaps

Hydrocarbon Processing Staff: Bloch, Heinz P.

In the 1970s and 1980s, multistage centrifugal compressors in the 3,000 acfm (about 5,000m3/hr) and lower flow ranges were largely confined to instrument and plant air duties. Three stages with interc..