Gaining Insights in Addressing Corrosion and Flaring Challenges

by | Mar 15, 2017 | Chemical, Downstream Hydrocarbons, Event, Industry

Jim Cahill

Jim Cahill

Chief Blogger, Social Marketing Leader

The American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers (AFPM) Annual Meeting is rapidly approaching—March 19-21 in San Antonio Texas. It is:

…the world’s premier refining meeting, assembling key executives, decision-makers, and technical experts from refining businesses, technology providers, contracting and consulting firms, and equipment manufacturers around the world.

If you’ll be attending, make sure to catch several great sessions by Emerson experts on corrosion and flaring-related issues. There will also be a Wednesday workshop for refiners and petrochemical manufacturers on ways to achieve Top Quartile operational performance. This workshop features IHS Markit’s Stephen Jones, who will share insights from CERAWeek and will join the Emerson experts in highlighting trends, strategies and practices to achieve Top Quartile operational performance. RSVP by Sunday, March 19th.


Tom Champlin will lead Tuesday off at 9am with a presentation, Enhancing Refinery Reliability and Availability through Online Corrosion Monitoring (AM-17-31).

Tom will discuss how wireless corrosion monitoring sensors can help assure the integrity of the asset, minimize the risk of unplanned outages and loss of containment and optimize maintenance and corrosion inhibition strategies.

Kjell Wold will follow Tom at 9:30am on the subject, New Perspectives on Refinery Corrosion and Integrity Management while Maximizing Opportunity Crudes (AM-17-32). Here’s his abstract:

Emerson's Kjell Wold


There is an increased focus on corrosion and integrity management in the oil & gas industry today, also in the refining industry. This is not only being driven by the need for improved operational safety for plant, personnel and environment, but it is also driven by a need for increased plant uptime and extended equipment life. Finally, a good corrosion management program can increase the operating window, e.g. allow increased blending of low cost crudes or reduce inhibitor consumption, reducing the plants operational cost.

Refineries have a range of corrosion challenges, like naphthenic acid corrosion and sulfuric acid corrosion. Efficient monitoring requires a tool-box of monitoring technologies and solutions. The paper gives an introduction to intrusive and non-intrusive monitoring technologies applicable in a plant, and how they can be combined into an integrated solution, also with other refinery monitoring applications. Examples of field data for different monitoring technologies will be provided.

Bringing data to the user has also been an industrial challenge. Standardization of new communication solutions like WirelessHART and modern data management applications offers a significant shift in the convenience, quality of data and real time information, allowing actions before damage takes place. Data management solutions will be discussed in the presentation.

Noel Bell will present later Tuesday afternoon on Early Alerts of Flare Events (AM-17-74). Here’s his abstract:

Emerson's Noel Bell


The ability to eliminate flare events could help manufacturers comply with new EPA regulations and avoid potential fines. Some flare events in refineries and chemical plants with flare gas recovery systems (FGRS) could be avoided if operators were provided with an early warning of conditions that could lead to a flare event. In situations where plant personnel have discretionary control over how much material is released to the flare system an early alert or warning of a potential flare event could allow them to reduce the load on the system and avoid exceeding the capacity of the FGRS.

In this paper we describe analytic techniques used on real flare system data from a NA refinery to provide early alerts of flare events. Frequency analysis and principal components analysis were successfully used to provide early warning indicators 15 minutes to several hours prior to actual flare events. Additionally, visualization methods and a computational platform for working with large amounts of complex information both on and off-line are demonstrated. Key features include the automatic generation of an on-line calculation from the off-line analysis that can provide actionable information to plant personnel and the ability to identify equipment likely responsible for the flare.

There will also be an Emerson hospitality suite gathering Sunday evening in room 1018 in the San Antonio Marriott Rivercenter to connect with the whole team to quench your thirst and discuss challenges and opportunities in your business. Join this gathering, these sessions and the Wednesday workshop to round out a great AFPM Annual Meeting in San Antonio!

Popular Posts

Comments

Follow Us

We invite you to follow us on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and YouTube to stay up to date on the latest news, events and innovations that will help you face and solve your toughest challenges.

Do you want to reuse or translate content?

Just post a link to the entry and send us a quick note so we can share your work. Thank you very much.

Our Global Community

Emerson Exchange 365

The opinions expressed here are the personal opinions of the authors. Content published here is not read or approved by Emerson before it is posted and does not necessarily represent the views and opinions of Emerson.

PHP Code Snippets Powered By : XYZScripts.com