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Petrochemicals

Novel Additives to Improve Resid Quality

Mar 14, 2011
Parag Shah
With an increasing focus on resid upgrade and bottom of the barrel conversion over the years due to economic advantages, refiners are increasingly processing heavy crudes that yield higher residue content. These crudes are also higher in salt, metal and sulfur content. Often in these cases, there...

Petroleum Resid Conversion: Opportunities and Limitations

Mar 14, 2011
Irv Wiehe
In the conversion of vacuum resids one has the option to form coke as a byproduct or to devise conversion processes that prevent coke formation while forming a heavy liquid byproduct. The theme of this presentation is that both options can be greatly improved over current commercial practice but...

Furnace Penetration Sealing Systems - Engineered Solutions for Cracking Furnaces

Mar 14, 2011
Malcolm A. Peirson
Ethylene Cracking Furnace operators are under continuing pressure to increase furnace efficiency. Fuel costs, environmental concerns and reduced maintenance budgets demand that unit reliability and efficiency be kept at a high level. Our paper will discuss an operational problem common to high...

Reducing the Load on Cooling Towers through Revamping of Individual Coolers

Mar 14, 2011
Graham T. Polley
The engineering of cooling water systems involves a consideration of both hydraulic and thermal behaviour. Unfortunately this is often ignored. For instance when engineers seek to reduce the thermal load on cooling towers they will often opt for increased heat recovery (via improved heat...

Cooling Water Issues – Cause and Solutions to Microbiologically Induced Corrosion

Mar 14, 2011
Carl G. Matherne
In the 2007 turnaround at the BASF FINA PETROCHEMICAL L.P. Ethylene Steam Cracker, severe damage was discovered in the cooling tower to process exchangers. Over 41 exchangers had been replaced or required total tube bundle replacement within the first seven years of operation. Several of the units...

Chemical Insights Indicate Process Opportunities for Residue Processing

Mar 14, 2011
Murray R. Gray
The vacuum residue fraction of petroleum is one of the most complex mixtures of compounds known, one which continues to defy comprehensive analysis. The combination of complexity, diversity, and aggregation of the asphaltenes has enormous implications for upgrading reactions and phase behaviour...

Multi-Model MPC for a Complex pH Neutralization Process

Mar 14, 2011
Weiting Tang
Control of feed pH control is an important task in chemical industries, wastewater treatment, polymerization reactions, fatty acid production and biochemical processes. However, this is a challenging problem due to (i) presence of large and varying time delays and (ii) complex time varying...

C5 Metathesis for Increased Propylene Production

Mar 14, 2011
Robert J. Gartside
The production of on-purpose propylene via the metathesis of ethylene and butenes now exceed 6% of the total propylene. The supply of butenes is tightening worldwide due to both the increased demand for metathesis feedstocks and the increased demand for butadiene. The C5 cut from steam crackers has...

Use of Process Simulation In Ethylene Plant APC and Dynamic Optimization

Mar 14, 2011
Akitoshi Takinami, Ravi Nath
Showa Denko owns and operates a large Ethylene plant in Oita, Japan. Depending on the economic environment, plant objective is a combination of Energy Efficiency and Production Capacity. In order to achieve these objectives, Showa Denko had contracted Yamatake and Honeywell to design, configure and...

Steam Utility Systems Are Not "Business as Usual" for Chemical Process Simulators

Mar 14, 2011
Jonathan Currie
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

Mar 14, 2011
Douglas W. Sullivan
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...

Using a Continuous MPC Algorithm to Control An Unsteady Batch Fermentation Process

Mar 14, 2011
William Stewart
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...

Prevention of CUI: “ Roadmap to Managing CUI ”

Mar 14, 2011
Klaus Bormuth
This paper details CUI cases as well as the means for preventing, finding and repairing them. Approaches and procedures for managing CUI are described leading to a document “Roadmap to Managing CUI” which can be modified to company specific requirements. In recent years more problems with CUI in...

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