Progress in the driverless car segment has served to illuminate one of the major future goals in industrial and process manufacturing: autonomous operations in process plants—in other words, the autonomous plant. While AO for process plants has received interest from the process automation and control industry, limited serious discussion has taken place in the process operations and IT domains.
Like many thousands of educational and operator training-related endeavors, reliability improvement training was abruptly suspended when the COVID-19 pandemic interrupted daily life as it was known prior to 2020.
Over the next two months, Hydrocarbon Processing will host two separate events for a global audience. One will gather the brightest minds in the industry to share the latest innovations and technologies in the industry, while the other will recognize the leaders in advancing the industry toward safer and more reliable, sustainable and profitable operations. Both events—Hydrocarbon Processing’s IRPC and the HP Awards—will be streamed on digital platforms and free to view.
Refineries and petrochemical plants face similar challenges in daily operations. Each must mitigate risk, anticipate maintenance, optimize operations and minimize expenses. To achieve these goals, plant personnel rely heavily on data to drive decisions.
In the oil and gas sector, managing a shutdown, turnaround, or even an outage is an unavoidable requirement.
Our lead case revolves around a comprehensive text on oil mist. It was issued in 1998 with a dust cover showing three oil cans.
The coronavirus (COVID-19) has disrupted all sectors of the oil and gas industry, including asset management.
Refineries, petrochemical plants and similar facilities rely on a significant number of heat exchangers for process control and product formulation throughout the plant.
The consistent global trend toward improvements in air quality and tighter regulations on emissions, as well as the International Maritime Organization’s shipping regulations, continue to mitigate sulfur levels—not only in conventional transport fuels (petrol and diesel), but also in jet fuels, fuel oils and other heavier distillates.
An experienced writer of technical procedures for many years, “KM” recently gave us a stunning glimpse of the probable volume of “ripe, low-hanging fruit” that still exists in some hydrocarbon processing facilities, ready to be harvested from home.