Professional societies are very important in advancing knowledge, standards, peer networks and more. Within our world of manufacturing and automation there are several including the International Society of Automation (ISA) and the Measurement, Control &...
A recent Hydrocarbon Processing article highlighted the changing financial picture for refiners over the past 24 months: Those margins collapsed this year in a global fuel supply glut, providing an incentive for refiners to undertake the shutdowns necessary for...
The autumn season is officially here in the Northern hemisphere and this season is filled with events and conferences. I'm always amazed when I hear about some of my friends in the industry and automation trade press and their daunting travel schedules through the...
The abundance of discounted crude oil, or opportunity crudes, as they are known in refinery parlance, has shifted refinery operators' mindsets over the past few years. In a Hydrocarbon Engineering article, Equip for Opportunity Crudes, Emerson's Marcelo Carugo and Tim...
We've discussed in earlier posts how opportunity crudes, while reducing feedstock costs, increase the complexity of operating a refinery. At a monthly meeting of the South Texas section of the AIChE, Emerson's Tim Olsen presented The New World of Opportunity Crudes....
The complexity in crude oil refining has grown due to many factors including mix of crude oil feedstocks, government regulations, and increasingly global customer base for refined product. In a Hydrocarbon Processing article, Improve refinery flexibility and...
If you're like me you may have you wondered why with all the U.S. shale oil production, there are calls to change federal law to allow exports even though the U.S is a large oil importer. The answer comes to me in an excellent Chemical Engineering Progress (CEP)...
If you're not in the oil refining business the names of the process units, such as cat crackers, can sound quite exotic. Emerson's Tim Olsen, a consultant on the refining industry team, wrote a great AIChE Chemical Engineering Progress article, An Oil Refinery...
I received an email of a new whitepaper, Heat Exchanger Challenges with Light Tight Crude! written by Emerson's Tim Olsen. Tim is a consultant on our refining industry team and has shared his expertise in numerous refining-related posts here on the blog. The rapid...
At the recent American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers (AFPM) 2013 Q&A and Technology Forum, Emerson's Tim Olsen had an article in the conference daily publication. You may recall Tim from earlier posts and as the past Chair for the AIChE Fuels and...
The AIChE 2013 Spring Meeting and 9th Global Congress on Process Safety is taking place this week down the road from me in San Antonio, Texas. I just heard the news from Emerson's Tim Olsen, Chair of the AIChE Fuels & Petrochemicals Division, that a paper on...
Sometimes when you read an article about tuning proportional-integral-derivative (PID) loops, you're treated to all the 2nd order differential equations they contain. These can be intimidating, especially if your college calculus classes are many years in the rearview...
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