Petrochemicals

Chemical reaction fouling is principally controlled by two factors: wall temperature and local fluid shear stress. Computer programs for the design of shell-and-tube exchangers generally calculate a mean heat transfer coefficient for the tube bundle. In reality both heat transfer coefficient and...

Trip & Throttle Valve Reliability Trip & Throttle (or Stop) valves are used in ethylene plants to isolate the energy to steam turbines when required. They are critical Safety Protection components with a high impact on a plant’s reliability; however, they operate under tough conditions like...

Today, there is no excuse for not getting five years or more on the run length of refinery preheat exchangers without the need for cleaning. Among the many tools available for fouling mitigation of preheat exchangers, the most overlooked ones involve determining and eliminating the cause. Almost...

Fouling behaviour is a crucial consideration in the selection and design of heat exchangers to be used in refinery pre-heat trains. We make the following observations regarding fouling associated with the heating of crude oil: 1. The fouling rate decreases with increase in wall shear stress 2. The...

The operating costs of a typical refinery utility system are so significant that small operational improvements can result in large annual savings. This paper introduces a new utility modelling package designed for PETRONAS to allow in-house modelling and optimization of their refinery and...

NEW CONTINUOUS COKING PROCESS A new coking process can accept resid feed from the conventional resid heater in a coking plant and continuously discharge vapor and dry petroleum coke particles. The process promotes a rapid recovery of volatiles from the resid enabling recovery of more volatiles. It...

Classical MPC has been leveraged to improve control on a nonlinear unsteady-state system, batch alcohol fermentation. The controller uses a hybrid model with fundamental reaction equations along with empirical process data-based modeling. More than thirty lines of batch quality control have been...

ABSTRACT A significant amount of work has transpired over the past several years in generating consensus-based standards that include ASME PCC-2 and ISO 24817 for developing composite repair systems. The intent in developing these standards has been to provide industry with guidelines for designing...

Predicting Operating Regimes in Heavy Gas Oil Hydrotreating Reactors Jinwen Chen and Mugurel Munteanu CanmetENERGY, Natural Resources Canada One Oil Patch Drive, Devon, AB, T9G 1A8, Canada Hydrotreating (HDT) or mild hydrocracking (HDC) of heavy gas oil or vacuum gas oil is an important step in...

Abstract: The conversion of methanol to olefins (MTO) is a means to produce ethylene and propylene from feedstock derived from sources other than crude oil or condensates. Methanol is widely produced from natural gas or coal at locations with abundant reserves. By utilizing methanol derived from...