Petroleum Refining

How hydrogen leakage threatens the decarbonization of the chemical industry – and what can be done about it.

Adding two solenoid valves to your Safety Instrumented System keeps your equipment, facility and personnel safe and your system online. Read the white paper below to learn more.

This white paper discusses the rising stem valve and compares it to the rotary valve. The reader will learn what to consider to ensure the lowest overall life cycle cost and best possible degree of process control.

Over 90% of manufacturing facilities world-wide use compressed air as part of their manufacturing process. However, this powerful utility is not without its problems, in the form of compressed air contamination. It is therefore common practice to install compressed air filters as part of a “purification system” to ensure contaminants are reduced and the system operates in a safe, efficient and cost effective manner.

Achieving a leak-free connection in any environment is the Holy Grail for many piping and instrumentation engineers. Traditional hookups use a multitude of valves and fittings – creating lots of potential leak points. The good news is, adopting ten easy steps can radically reduce leakage risks and achieve substantial cost and efficiency savings.

Increasingly, process control instrumentation solutions are being applied in ever more hostile environments. As a result, there has been a corresponding increase in the reported incidence of external corrosion to 316 stainless steel instrumentation tubing systems.

Heat Trace and Electric Process Heaters are used in many critical processes in all plants.  It is extremely important that you and your team know how to properly test, install and maintain your electric heaters. Lack of attention in regard to these fundamentals will lead to costly heater shutdown and will cause an interruption in your process.

The use of INPUT/OUTPUT software filters can provide enhanced performance of controllers to process systems conditions. The use of Input filters are to reduce the erratic fluctuations of the analog input signal due to either electrical “noise” conditions or rapid fluctuations of the analog input signal. It accomplishes this by slowing down the response of the analog input to a change.

In Jon Monsen's book, Control Valve Application Technology (published and distributed by Valin Corporation), Jon explains how to properly size and select a control valve. Jon recently received inquiries from customers interested in a further explanation of one of the graphs featured in his book. This article will cover that explanation.

In this paper I will show how an analysis using Metso’s Nelprof® control valve sizing and selection software’s unique ability to graph the installed gain of a control valve can be helpful in selecting the optimum pump for a balance of good controllability and minimum energy use.

Here are some essential steps to help ensure your instrumentation tube and fittings system is as safe as possible.

Selecting the correct chemical metering pump can be a daunting task because of the variations and types of chemical pumps available. In order to pick the best metering pump for the application you will need to consider several factors. For the sake of simplicity, we will limit our discussion to pumps that deliver no more than 50 gph and pressures of less than 250 psi.

There are very few elegant solutions for mid-to-large scale heavy industrial applications that require compact, high-temperature heating sources capable of delivering precise heat energy to a targeted location.

In recent years, portable filtration units, often referred to as filter carts, have become a common tool in the lubrication professional’s arsenal. Increasing demand for these systems has led to the development of a wide range of new products and driven down prices, which is a good thing. When filter carts first came onto the scene they were primarily used by service providers for decontaminating large systems. These early models were typically designed for low viscosity oils in large volume systems and were on the expensive side, making them unsuitable or impractical for many applications.

Operational efficiency is a critical factor in the fluid processing industry. The synergy of fitting components and assembly technology to achieve this objective is the focus of Fit-LINE, Inc. Applying extensive polymer technology and injection molding expertise, the company has analyzed the design, tooling and manufacturing processes required to create high-performance solutions for demanding high-purity fluid processing applications. Through extensive R&D, testing and evaluation, Fit-LINE has isolated three variables that need to be addressed to ensure leak-free fitting assemblies.

The purpose of a filter is to remove contaminants from a fluid stream either completely, or at least down to a given rating or specification. Filters are used to help control contaminants and are rated according to their ability to remove these contaminants from a liquid, gas or air stream. There are different methods in which the performance of filters are specified.

Answer a number of key questions to identify the most appropriate choice

At process plants, a significant percentage of measurement devices aren’t correctly matched to their application, leading to decreased quality and consistency of the operation. Often, the source of this problem is the assumption that one type of level measurement sensor suits multiple applications.

I was recently asked how the pressure at the vena contracta of a control valve in a liquid application can be determined. I am sharing my answer below.

For most systems, in order to get good control with stability throughout the full range of required flow rates, we need to use a control valve that has an installed flow characteristic that is linear, or at least as close to linear as possible.

All wells decline in production over time. This decline can usually be controlled by how hard the well is produced.

There are two strategies for reducing control valve noise:

1. Source control, that is doing something to the valve to make it less noisy, and

2. Path control, that is doing something to prevent the noise from reaching the people who would be bothered by it.

We will briefly discuss what causes aerodynamic noise and some of the things that can be done to reduce aerodynamic noise generated by control valves.

Perhaps the most misunderstood area of control valve sizing is the selection of the pressure drop, Δp, to use in the sizing calculation