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Chem Economics: ACC Releases Portfolio of Specialty Chemicals Indexes

September
2012
Chem Economics
T. Kevin Swift
The American Chemistry Council (ACC) has launched a new set of indexes covering nearly 30 segments of the U.S. specialty chemicals market. (The first, which dealt with plastic additives, was discussed in the July issue, p. 13.) This is the first set...
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Operational Inputs Into the Mechanical Integrity Program

Mar 15, 2011
F. Russ Davis
A predictive mechanical integrity (MI) program is based on the following: * Damage mechanisms that affect process equipment. * Rate at which degradation progresses. * Ability of the inspection group to identify and correct equipment damage before equipment failure. Operational temperature, pressure...

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...

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...

Advanced Hydrogen Management : More Than a Balancing Act

Mar 15, 2011
Sanjiv Ratan
Modern high complexity refining landscape involves increasing proportion of “opportunity crude” processing and widened bottom-of-the-barrel strategies, which together with ever stringent ‘clean fuels’ requirements has led to extensive need for hydrogen and its optimization in the refinery. This in...

More Refinery H2 through Efficiency, Recovery, and Process Improvements

Mar 15, 2011
Alan Zagoria
Hydrogen is even more important to refiners than it was just a few years ago. Heavier crudes, clean fuels, and increased conversion have increased hydrogen demand. Refiners can face costly choices if forced to adjust refinery operations to respond to hydrogen availability constraints. It is...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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