Avoiding Floating Roof Storage Tank Incidents

Posted Yesterday, under Refining, Tank Gauging
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Last year during the epic rains of Hurricane Harvey, more than 15 floating roof storage tanks in the Texas Gulf coast region failed during this record-setting storm. These failures resulted in a combined 3.1 million pounds of volatile chemicals being released into the atmosphere across the region, according to reports filed with the environmental agencies.

There are several factors that can lead to failure from inadequate drainage capacity to roof tilt conditions opening exposure to the outside environment. In normal conditions, floating roof tanks have advantages over other types of bulk storage tanks.

Emerson's Sandy Hughes


Emerson’s Sandie Hughes shared this story with me about the tank failures and pointed me to a whitepaper, Floating Roof Monitoring Using Radar Technology.

Research from the International Association of Oil & Gas Producers (IOGP) on the frequency of incidents shows:

  • 1 in 625 tanks will have liquid spilled on the floating roof
  • 1 in 900 floating roofs will sink
  • 1 in 8,300 tanks will develop a full surface fire

The traditional way to monitor and prevent floating roof incidents is to perform manual inspections on a periodic basis. This includes: Continue Reading ▶

Helping Engineered Solutions Providers Improve Performance

Posted 2 days ago, under Project Services
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Original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) play an important role in capital projects by providing modular equipment and processes. They deliver engineered solutions to manufacturers to meet a variety of project requirements, and after commissioning their equipment, these OEMs often give ongoing support through the equipment lifecycle. In return, Emerson offers the measurement devices, final control elements, control and safety systems, sensors, remote monitoring, and asset maintenance systems sought after by OEMs.

Emerson's Melissa Holler


I caught up with Emerson’s Melissa Holler, Vice President of Strategic Accounts and the person responsible for launching a new Engineered Solutions Provider program focused on those OEMs that desire a higher-level strategic relationship with Emerson.

Engineered Solutions Providers are challenged with meeting production, cost, schedule, and engineering requirements, as well as their customers’ expectations for modern technology that is of high quality and reliability.

The Emerson team works with these Engineered Solutions Providers to help address their challenges by providing a single point of contact for all business interactions and a single business agreement between companies. Emerson engages with these Engineered Solutions Providers at a strategic level, enabling joint problem solving and optimization to ensure the solutions provided to the end user are not only cost effective but also highly reliable to deliver the uptime that end users expect. Continue Reading ▶

Quantifying the Resource Efficiency of the Global Steel Sector: Why is Our Metric Better?

Posted 4 days ago, under Energy, Metals, Mining, Minerals
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Emerson's Ana Gonzalez Hernandez


Author: Ana Gonzalez Hernandez

In my last post, I introduced Emerson’s new resource efficiency approach. With it, Emerson proposes a new way of thinking about resource efficiency. One that encapsulates many aspects of modern industry solutions: we leverage the value residing in available metered data, communicate key knowledge through powerful digital visuals, and do so by tracking more a holistic metric – be it continuously or as part of corporate strategic exercises.

In this blog post, I now briefly describe how we applied this resource efficiency approach to analyse the improvement opportunities available in the steel industry worldwide. More details on the method used and the results obtained can be found in this ScienceDirect article; this is the article that this post is based on.

The global steel industry: ripe for change

Strong, durable and formable, steel is the dominant engineering and construction material in our modern economy. Ranking among the five most energy-intensive industrial processes, the production of steel alone consumes about 6% of the global final energy use and generates about 7% of global energy-related CO2 emissions. This equates to over half of the total energy consumed in the European Union in 2016. Future projections do not bode any better: forecast increases in wealth and population are predicted to at least double the demand for steel (and that of other metals) by 2050. Continue Reading ▶

PeakVue Analytics for More Reliable Machinery Performance

Posted 1 week ago, under Asset Optimization, Reliability
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Emerson's Robert Skeirik


Yesterday, in a post, How to Prevent Bearing Failures, we described how PeakVue analytics technology can provide early warning for bearing problems.

In this 6-minute YouTube video, PeakVue Signal Processing Demo, Emerson’s Robert Skeirik describes how these advanced analytics can spot bearing problems much earlier that traditional vibration measurements.

This extra time allows the operations and maintenance teams to plan and resolve the issue before a failure occurs.

In the video, Robert compares and contrasts simple vibration data measured in inches or centimeters/second versus PeakVue analytics measuring peak impact in g’s (g-force). He shows data of a bearing heading for failure. Continue Reading ▶

How to Prevent Bearing Failures

Posted 2 weeks ago, under Asset Optimization
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Emerson's Brian Overton


Rotary bearings for industrial machinery reduce to friction between the moving parts. As with other mechanical parts, they wear over time.

Plant Services: 6 steps to preventing bearing failureIn a Plant Services article, 6 steps to preventing bearing failure, Emerson’s Brian Overton shares ways to extend bearing life and avoid unplanned shutdowns.

He opens highlighting their importance.

Without effective bearing motion, a machine shaft can fail, and the machine can break down.

His 6 steps include: Continue Reading ▶

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