Petroleum Refining

Explore best practices for designing and maintaining compressed air systems to match air quality requirements.

Heat transfers via conduction, convection and radiation; understanding these mechanisms enables optimal heater selection.

Traditional fixed I/O architectures are giving way to mobile, cloud-connected, self-contained units.

Early planning, inventory readiness and supply-chain collaboration are critical for successful petroleum refinery turnarounds.

There are several key factors that need to be explored before settling on the appropriate level transmitter technology for a given application.

Experienced process control engineers follow familiar, time-tested steps when presented with a new system to design and specify. Selecting a control valve for a process always requires the same information: collection of the process conditions, calculating required capacity and determining the materials that will survive in the process stream. But some process streams present more challenges than others.

In the world of industrial filtration, one of the most common activities involves the removal or displacement of water from another liquid. However, this process is further subdivided into three distinct phases. Chronologically, the first of these phases is particulate filtration (sometimes referred to as prefiltration).

Nothing will impede a successful plant turnaround like improper planning. One aspect of this planning is effective inventory management, and the keys to achieving this are properly identifying and communicating maintenance needs. Read the article below published in Hydrocarbon Processing Magazine to learn more.

A large refinery in California (U.S.) was conducting a turnaround and utilized an outside engineering firm to oversee the process. During this phase, the engineering firm discovered the refinery needed new emergency safety shut-off valves (chopper valves) as part of their regeneration process.

The certification exists for a reason to ensure that the control panels being built meet the very highest safety standards available.

The key to making the proper decisions on condition monitoring is to understand what kind of information is required, how often that information is needed and what kind of budget is in play.

Taking a systematic approach to specifying a tank heater can help ensure the equipment specified delivers the heating performance desired. Factors to consider include the amount of energy needed, heat loss, direct or indirect heating, materials of construction, and controls.

The concepts of preventive maintenance and condition monitoring are not always characterized in a way that is entirely accurate. They sometimes seem to be treated as a one-size-fits-all service that many operators believe they need. However, these concepts can mean very different things depending on the application.

Industrial process plants are complex facilities with thousands of components that play a role in the operation of the plant. Not all these components hold the same consequences if they are improperly selected or if they fail to perform their designed function.

Recently an article was published that presented an easily constructed Excel sheet that estimates hydrodynamic noise in control valves1. A number of people have asked me if there is something similar for aerodynamic noise. 

A veteran of valve sizing with more than 40 years of experience provides his perspective on how to calculate the compressibility factor of a real gas for control valve sizing purposes.

Most control valve manufacturers include IEC 60534-8-4:2015 in their control valve sizing and selection software to predict control valve hydrodynamic noise. However, users who want to make quick noise predictions or who want to construct valve sizing applications, programming the above noise standard can be a daunting task. 

If one wants to be able to do accurate hand calculations, or construct a simple program or Excel sheet, the method described here gives answers that agree exactly with iterative calculations using the equations in the current version of the ISA and IEC standards.

EIVs are a critical safety device for fuel-burning equipment and industrial processes that use flammable ingredients. Proper selection is critical for the safety of the workers in the plant, plant equipment and the surrounding communities.

The availability of an easily constructed Excel worksheet that calculates and graphs control valve installed gain in conjunction with the users preferred control valve sizing application has prompted a new interest in the application of these calculations. Three examples are shown here.

For any process where temperature needs to be monitored or controlled, a thermal loop is required. Typically, a process that contains a thermal loop includes some key elements: the process itself, the temperature sensor or transmitter, the temperature controller and the power controller. 

Positioner selection deserves due diligence and consideration of several factors before making any firm decision. Theres certainly not a typical one-size-fits-all approach for positioners; an uninformed choice can lead to undesirable consequences.

For a power plant to run as efficiently as possible, proper filtration is a critical part of the equation.

By taking advantage of Valins program, customers can be confident that their inventory management function is fully optimized.  They can rest assured that the right parts will be in the right place right when they need them, while keeping the peace of mind that their transactional costs are being lowered and the KPIs are being adequately analyzed.