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Maximising premium distillate by catalytic dewaxing
Feb-2011Advances in technology for catalytic dewaxing of distillates by isomerisation provide improved activity
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Catalytic oxidation of spent caustic
Jul-2011A process to oxidise spent caustic in an existing treatment plant by a catalytic route in the presence of air enhances the quality of wastewater relea ...
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Hydrogen-induced cracking and blistering
Apr-2009Hydrogen damage to steel is a well-known consequence of corrosion in sour service. A corrosion inhibitor program can reduce hydrogen entry into the metal. ...
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Combating green oil formation in a CCR reformer
Jul-2013The addition of a chloride adsorber guard bed solved a refiner’s issues with contamination affecting a CCR reformer’s rich gas compressor
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Choosing the proper regulator for high-purity applications
Feb-2008Regulators are highly technical, highly specialised fluid-handling components. So, the next time you need one please do not just grab one out of the supply ...
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Entrainment issues in vacuum column flash zones
Jan-2010For a vacuum tower to operate effectively, the flash zone and the wash section must work together to provide the best possible feed quality to the sections ...
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Hydrotreating in the production of green diesel
Apr-2010A novel scheme enables co-processing of light gas oil and tall diesel to produce a renewable diesel meeting EN 590 specifications
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Diesel and VGO recovery
Oct-2005Fundamental design considerations influencing diesel and vacuum gas oil (VGO) recovery when revamping existing or designing grassroots crude units. By ...
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Multiple corrosion mechanisms in crude distillation overhead system
Jul-2009Extensive troubleshooting efforts determine distinct corrosion mechanisms simultaneously attacking multiple areas of an atmospheric tower overhead sys ...
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Simulation of a visbreaking unit
Apr-2011Simulation of a commercial visbreaking unit supports optimisation of the unit’s performance. The visbreaking unit utilises vacuum residue as a feed and ...
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Residue desulphurisation and conversion
Apr-2006The current market forces that presage a boom in resid hydrotreatment are examined along with recently reported progress in technology
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Predicting catalyst lifetime
Jul-2013A simulation model compares accurately with actual operating data to provide reliable predictions of catalyst lifetime in naphtha reforming
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Managing vanadium from high metals crude oils
Sep-2003Improvements in process and equipment design with regard to crude unit and delayed coker distillation column performance can reduce metals content
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Maximise olefins through catalytic cracking Indmax FCC process
Apr-2008The primary purpose of the fluid catalytic cracking (FCC) process historically has been to convert low-valued, heavier petroleum streams into gasoline, ...
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Sour water stripping Part 2: phenolic water
Aug-2014In addition to ammonia, hydrogen sulphide, and carbon dioxide, phenolic sour water may contain a host of so-called heat stable salts (HSSs), hydrogen cyanide, ...
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Natural gas fuels the integration of refining and petrochemicals
Jul-2012Maximising the use of natural gas in a refinery-petrochemicals complex offers higher margins and lower carbon emissions
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Designing the CDU/VDU for opportunity crudes
Oct-2012New units for processing heavy crudes should not be designed using conventional practices or run length will be short, and product yields and quality ...
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Optimised hydrogen production by steam reforming: part I
Jan-2012Modelling optimisation of process and design parameters for minimising natural gas consumption in hydrogen production by steam reforming
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Mercury treatment options for natural gas plants
Jan-2014Removing mercury as close as is practicable to the front end of a natural gas processing system is the best choice
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Sour water stripping Part 3: waste water treatment
Sep-2014Mass transfer rate-based simulation is used in a case study to examine two of the important factors that determine the performance of a 2-Stage Chevron ...
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Divided-wall columns – a novel distillation concept
Oct-2000The technology of divided-wall columns using a single distillation tower, described in this article, is claimed to have investment and operating advantages ...
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Pretreatment of resid FCC feedstocks
Jul-2004How a refinery optimised hydrogen consumption to raise API “shift”, enhancing FCC economics. The effect of heavy feedstock reactivity on the operation ...
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Reliable design of sour water strippers
Jul-2012A simulation model aims to raise confidence in the reliability of sour water stripper design. Oil refining always generates sour water, and within a refinery ...
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Main fractionator water wash systems
Sep-2006When properly designed and operated, main fractionator wash water systems can remove salt with little upset
Most Popular
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Maximising FCC performance and yields with catalyst innovations (ERTC)
Nov-2017BASF analyses equilibrium catalyst (Ecat) and operating data from over 200 units worldwide. These data provide valuable information on refinery conditions ...
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Maximising propylene and isobutylene from the FCC
Aug-2018A combination of recent catalyst and additive developments raised a refinery’s output of FCC propylene and isobutylene.
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Savings using divided wall columns
Jan-2019Divided wall columns can provide substantial energy and capital cost savings compared to conventional distillation methods.
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The future for hydrocracking: part 1
Nov-2017Hydrocracking technology faces challenges and opportunities amid diesel emission scandals, low sulphur marine fuels, and the growing position of electric ...
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Failure analysis of burner piping
Jul-2014Investigation of the causes of a severe refinery fire leads to recommendations for burner piping design to prevent such incidents
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Understanding FCC feeds and benefits to refinery operation
Apr-2015In this work, over one hundred FCC feed samples, originating from diverse geographic locations and consisting of assorted FCC refinery streams, were a ...
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Acid gas treatment upgrade for Qatargas
Jul-2016Upgrading acid gas treatment at the world’s largest LNG facility safeguards the plant’s design capacity and its ability to process increasingly sour ...
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Refining-petrochemicals integration: an Indian view
Mar-2018Integrating a refinery with a petrochemicals complex offers high value products and a boost to gross margin.
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Simulating and monitoring H2 plant operations
Oct-2012A computer program was developed to enable a refinery to monitor its hydrogen production daily to foresee potential operating problems
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Refining/petrochemical integration: a new paradigm
Sep-2013The global trend in motor fuel consumption favours diesel over gasoline. There is a simultaneous increase in demand for various petrochemicals such as ...
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Myth of high cutpoint in dry vacuum units
Apr-2014Accurate measures of true boiling point cutpoints are essential to correctly evaluate vacuum unit performance
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Maximizing refinery energy optimisation
Jan-2018Flexicoking™ technology is a highly differentiated unique resid upgrading process resulting in significantly lower environmental emissions than other ...
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Understanding centrifugal compressor performance
Apr-2002In a connected process system, expensive changes to the compressor and driver can be avoided with system debottlenecking modifications
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Hydrogen management in a GHG-constrained refinery
Mar-2011Recently the US Environmental Protection Agency announced that it would regulate greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from power plants and oil refineries starting ...
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21st century reciprocating compressors for downstream applications
May-2016Technology, like time, marches on. Think about the advancements in technology that have taken place in the last 50 years. Advancements have taken us from ...
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The challenges of crude blending - Part 2
Jun-2016The second part of a two-part article details the importance of crude selection and blending strategies to prosper in a low cost yet volatile market.
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Are produced water emission factors accurate?
Oct-2016Rules of thumb are often used for estimating emissions from Produced Water storage tanks, especially when entrained hydrocarbons are present.
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Olefins and butanes to gasoline
Jul-2017Increasing alkylation capacity to process readily available olefins can be an opportunity to add value to refinery operations
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Opening the crude flexibility window: enhancing crude unit capabilities
Mar-2018Innovative online analysers help refiners to mitigate crude unit threats in real time and provide new insights into existing problems.
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Avoiding unplanned reactor shutdowns
Feb-2019In hydroprocessing operations, prevention is better than just dealing with the effects of corrosion and fouling problems.
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Optimise hydrocracker operations for maximum distillates
Apr-2012Estimation of an accurate operating window for a hydrocracker enables refiners to minimise yields of light ends and maximise diesel production
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Troubleshooting a FCC unit
Mar-2012The source of a fouling problem in a FCC CO boiler was identified by systematic analysis of fresh catalysts, additives and equilibrium catalysts
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Combating green oil formation in a CCR reformer
Jul-2013The addition of a chloride adsorber guard bed solved a refiner’s issues with contamination affecting a CCR reformer’s rich gas compressor
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Simplifying hydrogen production
Jun-2017Catalyst systems developed for the purification and reforming sections of the hydrogen plant target significant barriers to efficient production.
Most Recent
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Increasing resid processing flexibility
Sep-2018A resid processing technology converts low value refinery streams to full range refinery products.
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Water treatment on contract
Sep-2018Rented mobile water services can be a cost effective alternative to capital investment in water treatment plant.
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Low cost gasoline from low octane feed
Sep-2018Naphtha and methanol are the feedstocks for production of high octane, low cost gasoline.
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Opening the crude flexibility window: automation manages threats in real time
Sep-2018By increasing the volume of quality data, refiners can automate the correct addition of chemical additives to respond to variations in unit performanc ...
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Predictive analytics in incident prevention
Sep-2018Predictive analytics can support risk management by identifying where failures are likely to occur and what can be done to prevent them.
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Effect of reactor inlet temperature in a hydrotreater
Sep-2018Solving a problem of pressure drop in a naphtha hydrotreater led to fresh insights into the role of reactor inlet temperature.
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Reducing hydrogen consumption in diesel hydrotreating
Sep-2018Fractionating a raw diesel stream before hydrotreating reduces consumption of hydrogen to produce high quality diesel.
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Controlling the metals content of FCC equilibrium catalyst
Sep-2018A method for calculating catalyst make-up provides a means to control the stability of FCC equilibrium catalyst in terms of metals content
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Efficient membrane systems for natural gas dehydration
Sep-2018Applications of membrane technology for reducing water content in natural gas to meet pipeline specifications.
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Some myths about mechanical cleaning
Aug-2018Because it has long been the only option when unit cleaning becomes unavoidable, the true cost of mechanical cleaning has been overlooked.
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Maximising propylene and isobutylene from the FCC
Aug-2018A combination of recent catalyst and additive developments raised a refinery’s output of FCC propylene and isobutylene.
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The corrosion-fouling cycle in amine systems
Aug-2018Recommendations to reduce the impact of the mechanisms of corrosion in amine systems.
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Reducing plant downtime
Aug-2018The benefits of including a non-intrusive approach within a risk based strategy for the inspection of pressure vessels.
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Converting LCO to gasoline with high RON (TIA)
Aug-2018Light cycle oil (LCO) is an important byproduct of fluidised catalytic cracking (FCC). With the increasing severity of FCC operations, LCO with higher ...
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Control optimisation for petrochemicals (TIA)
Aug-2018Neste Engineering Solutions’ (NES) Dynamic Real Time Optimization (DRTO) technology continues to demonstrate long term cumulated benefit versus traditional ...
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Modular compressor package for refiners (TIA)
Aug-2018Volatile spot market prices for crude oil and products, as well as growing stringent legislation requirements for environmentally friendly fuels for all ...
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Once through hydrocracker revamp (TIA)
Aug-2018Chevron Lummus Global (CLG), a joint venture between Chevron USA Inc. and McDermott, has safely and successfully executed a once through hydrocracker unit ...
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Reducing NOx emissions from an FCC unit (TIA)
Aug-2018Refinery processes account for a considerable share of the overall emissions of air pollutants in Europe. The Industrial Emissions Directive (IED) is the ...
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Electric vehicles and refining
Jul-2018How well can oil refining, the source of hydrocarbon-based fuels that have sustained much of the world’s transport for more than a century mix with electric ...
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Dividing wall columns for gas plants
Jul-2018Uniting two unit offerings into one column shell can lead refiners to improve the profitability of their gas plants.
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Replacing a corroded column with packing internals
Jul-2018A corroded column was replaced with a new column equipped with high capacity packing. The cross sectional area is less than half that of the original.
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Using infrared monitors to achieve auxiliary flare pilot monitoring (TIA)
Jul-2018Infrared flare pilot monitoring as a primary or secondary monitoring solution provides a pilot status signal when thermocouple failures occur and assures ...
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Challenges and opportunities of an FCC revamp
Jul-2018An FCC revamp for enhanced refinery performance and profitability called for close coordination with the technology licensor and contractors.
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A new solution to eliminate centrifuge for sulphur in crude oil analysis
Jun-2018Test methods for measuring sulphur content, like ASTM D4294 and ISO 8754, have become critical for assessing the value of crude oil.
White Papers
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Digital twins enhance LNG plant performance
May-2019(White Paper) - Digitalisation technologies offer new and disruptive ways to overcome the challenges of increasing margin, reducing carbon emissions and ...
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The next generation of elemental analysis
Apr-2019(White Paper) - With tightening sulphur regulations across the globe, petroleum professionals have the unique challenge of certifying their products as ...
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How DEA affects CO2 removal by Hot Pot
Apr-2019(White Paper) - In ammonia production, CO2 removal from synthesis gas is an important processing operation. There are a number of technologies for taking ...
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Data operations transform fuels value
Apr-2019(White Paper) - A refiner applied advanced analytics to develop techniques for processing opportunity crudes which minimise negative effects on the plant.
