AIChE Spring Meeting and Global Congress on Process Safety

Fouling Mitigation Program Recovers Operating Efficiency and Extends Run Length for Ethylene Plant Oil Quench Tower

Mar 16, 2011

Mike Hong

Extension of system run length and maximizing plant throughput will bring substantial profit to olefin producers. The fouling problem in the oil quench tower of the ethylene plant, however, has become a challenge to achieving long run length goals and has even led to unscheduled shutdown or reduced...

Enhanced Heat Transfer Technology Proves Beneficial In Cooling Water Driven Condensers

Mar 16, 2011

Michael R. Sobczyk

Cooling water driven condensers utilizing enhanced heat transfer technology deliver technical and economic advantages in both revamp and grassroots applications. Meeting equipment performance demands within the confinement of an existing unit structure can be accomplished with simple tube bundle or...

Improved Ethylene Cracking Furnace Control with Modern Process Mass Spectrometers

Mar 16, 2011

Peter J. Traynor

Whereas process mass spectrometers have been used as an alternative (lower cost) solution to multiple process gas chromatograph installations for many years, their use has been somewhat limited by their complexity - both real and perceived. The latest generation of process mass spectrometers has...

A New Class of Polymer Inhibitors

Mar 16, 2011

P. N. Ramaswamy

Polymer inhibitors are used within an ethylene plant in locations which are susceptible to aggressive polymer formation i.e. Primary Fractionator, Compressors, Pyrolysis Gasoline Strippers and within the Gas Separation units. Over the years, the use of such additives has been extended to newer...

Practical PID Control: Use Filters for Better Disturbance Rejection and Setpoint Tracking

Mar 15, 2011

Patrick P. Thorpe

Many of the practical problems in achieving high performance feedback control for challenging applications have been addressed by modifications to the basic PID control law. These modifications include set-point filters that allow both load rejection and set-point following objectives to be...

LNG Carrier Polystyrene Foam Cargo Insulation Performance Under Fire Exposure

Mar 15, 2011

Jerry Havens

The United States Government Accountability Office (GAO), in its February 2007 report &'Public Safety Consequences of a Terrorist Attack on a Tanker Carrying Liquefied Natural Gas Need Clarification&', stated that &'The leading unaddressed priority ... was the potential for cascading...

The Importance of Carbon and Hydrogen Management In the Development of Thermochemical Production of Biofuels

Mar 15, 2011

Richard G. Mallinson

Biomass has the potential to supply significant quantities of transportation fuels as increasing worldwide demand will place significant pressure on the supply. In the US, increasing imports of energy could make any imbalance especially acute, as has been demonstrated in the past. Additionally,...

Physical Solvents That Are Alternatives for PEGDME In CO2 Absorption

Mar 15, 2011

Matthew B. Miller

Advanced gasification power plants will employ the water-gas shift reaction producing a high pressure gas-phase mixture containing CO 2 , H 2 and water. This gas mixture at elevated pressures provides ample driving force in order to use a physical solvent that will selectively absorb, not...

Consequences of High-Pressure Tube Ruptures In Low-Pressure Liquid-Filled Shell Heat Exchangers

Mar 15, 2011

Claire J. Ennis

Shell-tube type heat exchangers are often used to exchange heat between a high pressure fluid and a low pressure fluid, and the pressure difference between the two fluids could be significantly high. In the event of a partial- or full-rupture of a tube, a problem may arise in that a transient...

Thoughts about Safety, Staying at Zero

Mar 15, 2011

Rendell Newton

Perfect safety records and perfect environmental records are an “inalienable right”, given to us not by governments, companies, or others. It is a right we give ourselves. It takes different skills and thinking to stay at zero recordable incidents than it does to get to zero recordable incidents...

Modeling the Vapor Source Associated with the Spill of LNG Into Troughs and Trenches

Mar 15, 2011

Nicolas F. Ponchaut

Modern LNG receiving terminals are often configured with LNG piping outside of the tank impoundment area with troughs and trenches to capture any releases from such piping. The trenches and troughs are inclined to guide the spill toward a bund, sump or an area that is within impoundment walls...

User Beware: When Simple Consequence Models Can Give the Wrong Answers

Mar 15, 2011

Filippo Gavelli

Over the past few years, the use of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) models for safety analyses of LNG facilities in the United States has been steadily increasing. However, with the notable exception of offshore terminals, for which the use of CFD models is required by the U.S. Coast Guard, the...

Inferential Monitoring & Optimization of Crude Units Via Hybrid Models

Mar 15, 2011

Vladimir Mahalec

Refinery crude units often process variety of feedstocks. If properties of the feed entering the crude unit are not precisely known, it is difficult to predict how changes in the tower operating conditions will affect properties of the products. Similarly, if on-line analyzers are not available, it...

Flare Minimization Via Dynamic Simulation

Mar 15, 2011

Kuyen Li

Flaring in chemical process industry (CPI) is an important method to protect equipment and personnel safety during the process upset and the chemical plant turnaround. However, excessive flaring emits lots of carbon dioxide as well as air pollutants, which cause negative environmental and social...

Critical FLNG Project Enablers: Identified Risks and Mitigation

Mar 15, 2011

Joseph H. Cho

Energy demand in the next two decades is expected to increase by 50 percent or more driven by the engine of economic growth. In parallel, the global demand for natural gas is anticipated to grow faster than the overall demand for liquid and fossil fuels. Economical monetization of stranded reserves...

Process Automation During Refinery Unit Transitions

Mar 15, 2011

Robert M. Tsai

Process Automation ideas and technologies have been used sporadically for decades. However, in US refineries, automation technologies are still relatively rare. Critics of the technology will often point to complexity, high upkeep, and difficulty in changing the status quo as stumbling blocks to...

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AIChE Spring Meeting and Global Congress on Process Safety

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