The performance of capital project facility commissioning, startup and initial operations often falls short of expectations, and the opportunity for innovative commissioning and startup technologies has yet to be discussed extensively.
Our publication often features a Viewpoint column, an executive-level short opinion piece that usually focuses on the author’s sector of the hydrocarbon processing industry. This month, we are featuring two columns back-to-back, presenting alternative views on a single topic. We use the word “alternative” deliberately—rather than “opposing”—as we wish to highlight views that present legitimately different perspectives.
The term confirmation bias recently came up in a book I was reading,1 and it was then that I realized how relevant it was to engineering.
Kumar, S.,
Nanoti, S. M.,
Garg, M. O., CSIR-Indian Institute of Petroleum;
Amutha, R.,
Nandagopalu, N. V. N., Chennai Petroleum Corp. Ltd.
Solvent deasphalting (SDA) is emerging as a low-cost, bottom-of-the-barrel upgrading process to recover valuable oil from short residue. This oil can either be further processed to make lube-oil-based stocks or cracked in secondary processing units.
I have spent most of my career in the mechanical engineering technical area because that is what I do best. I was a manager of advanced engineering for many years, but then realized that it was not my calling.
For the connected enterprise, what was once just a futuristic ideal is now becoming a reality. Step by step, organizations are beginning to put together the pieces of the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT).
Annual bottom-line losses due to equipment failures total more than $100 MM at major refineries and petrochemical complexes. Corporate executives charge plant personnel with improving the reliability of the facility.
Modularization is an alternative way of performing engineering aimed to reduce the number of interfaces, the total installed cost (TIC) and overall schedule length of a project, while optimizing the return on investment (ROI) and allowing standardization for similar future projects.
Why is operational excellence (OE) increasingly being recognized as the path to world-class performance?
Gulf Publishing Company and Hydrocarbon Processing are pleased to announce that IRPC 2017 will be held April 18–20 in New Delhi.