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Why crystallization? Why Sulzer? Driven by the need to reduce energy consumption and to cope with new feedstocks, the chemical industry is striving to more and more improve process efficiency. Whether it’s oil-based, bio-based or from recycling streams, Sulzer develops the right purification solutions to address the market requirements. Why use crystallization? - It makes the purification of close boilers possible when other technologies fail — therefore allowing ultra-high ...
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Johnson Matthey licensed processes
A portfolio of advanced process technologies for global markets. Johnson Matthey (JM) develops and licenses proprietary process technologies. We also offer collaborating companies an extensive range of technology development, process design and engineering skill. For over thirty years JM has been engaged in innovative DAVY™ licensing development. Our comprehensive expertise of catalysis and reaction engineering has been tailored to the production of a wide range of chemicals ...
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Maximize reliability in grassroots crude units
Crude unit operators are far too familiar with a long list of crude unit reliability problems including fouling in heat exchangers and fired heaters, poor desalting, corrosion of piping and equipment, and coking in the vacuum column wash zone. Many millions of dollars have been spent fighting these problems, yet they continue to force unplanned shutdowns with depressing regularity. Revamps must address reliability issues, but project scope is hindered by the limitations of existing ...
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Maximize the value of your naphtha feedstocks and downstream processes
New solutions for changing needs Lighten the burden of heavy feedstocks with Topsoe catalysts, process designs and technologies. If your refinery is like most, you’re under pressure to squeeze more value out of heavier feedstocks, and this presents new challenges for catalysts. To name just one example, increasing use of coker feedstocks has led to higher silica and nitrogen levels in the naphtha streams, requiring catalysts with superior HDN activity and greater surface ...
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Modern crude distillation, modularized
Global interest in modular refinery construction is surging. Small modular refineries are attractive to investors for several important reasons: SPEED: Project time from contract execution to start-up can be as short as 18-24 months. LOGISTICAL ADVANTAGES:Modular refineries can be built in remote locations to realize efficiencies in supply and transportation of raw crude and refined products. LOW INITIAL COST: Small relative size makes initial capital cost more manageable. Modules ...
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Myth of the 1000°F vacuum unit cutpoint
Canadian Synbit and Dilbit crudes will come to make-up a substantial fraction of feedstocks to North American refineries. Today, however, for the most part refiners both north and south of the 40° parallel seem to be unaware of the extreme challenges this change will present. To run an oil sands crude in a vacuum unit designed for conventional heavy feedstocks and to expect a 1000°F cutpoint for a 5-6 year run is like believing in the Tooth Fairy. Bitumen based crudes ...
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Heavy crudes are here to stay. As longs as oil prices remain high, Canadian, Venezuelan, Deep Water Gulf of Mexico, Mexican and other low API gravity crude oils will play an ever more important role in supplying world refineries. And prices promise to remain high because gainsayers notwithstanding, Hubbert was right. A big question is how to handle best these nasty crudes? Do you revamp existing units or invest in new capacity? With refineries now running flat out, the balance ...
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Flawless project execution will not prevent a unit shutdown due to selecting the wrong metallurgy for a challenging crude slate. No matter how well it is fabricated and installed, a shell and tube exchanger with cold, high viscosity vacuum resid on the tube side will have poor heat transfer performance. On-time shipping and installation of a too-small desalter will not prevent crude column overhead corrosion if the centerline velocity is overly optimistic for the design crude. A ...
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A group of interesting articles* deals with opportunity crudes, a mixed breed that includes very heavy, sour and high total acid number types as well as those with unexceptional naphthenic acid content but which do have significant concentrations of aliphatic acids or possess the ability to generate them during processing. They all sell at substantial discounts that give refiners who can process them the opportunity to reap higher profits. Hence their name. Note that phrase ...
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Price differentials between conventional and opportunity crudes compel refiners to process increasing percentages of lower valued opportunity crude. However, as many refiners have learned the hard way, opportunity crudes are tied to unique processing challenges. Furthermore, existing crude unit configurations may limit high profit opportunity crude to a disappointingly small proportion of the total unit blend. Processing a changing slate of opportunity crudes of varying compositions ...
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Sulzer Chemtech is the world‘s most renowned supplier of equipment and related solutions in the field of static mixing. The combination of engineering expertise and many years of application know-how enables Sulzer Chemtech to provide global solutions for improved polymer product quality. All Sulzer Chemtech products and services rely on a successful integration of three main competencies: • Static mixing know-how • Piloting & scale up • Process & ...
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Sulzer Chemtech, a member of the Sulzer Corporation, with headquarters in Winterthur, Switzerland, is active in the field of process engineering, employing 3'000 persons worldwide. Sulzer Chemtech is represented in all important industrial countries setting standards in the fields of mass transfer and static mixing with its advanced and economical solutions. Sulzer Chemtech is organized into four business units, one of which is the Process Technology group. This business unit ...
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Processing heavy Canadian crude
Reducing crude oil cost is the major incentive driving crude and vacuum unit projects to handle heavy Canadian crudes. But such crudes–Albian Heavy, Christina Lake, MacKay River and others derived from oil sands–today present refiners with a unique set of problems not just because of extra-low API gravity, but also because of asphaltenes, vanadium and nickel, high solids content and extremely high viscosity vacuum residues. To process such crudes reliably over a 4-5 ...
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A new perspective on improving process and operational efficiencies
Presented with ageing equipment and ever-increasing environmental restrictions, process engineers are challenged with maximizing efficiency and mitigating problems. Without the necessary information, facing this challenge can be difficult or impossible. Tracerco provides you with the insights you need to help troubleshoot production problems and optimise processes. With the widest range of scanning and tracer diagnostic services on the market, Tracerco helps the refining and ...