Emerson Exchange 365

Activity

Maximize Opportunity Crude Blend Percentages

Jim Cahill

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 maintenance. Adding pressure to falling margins are increased costs for craft labor such as pipe fitters and ironworkers. One way to address these cost…
- 5 Jan 2017
Improved Refinery Performance via Direct to Ship Blending

Jim Cahill

For refineries, blending operations can be challenging due to unscheduled downtime, off-spec production requiring reblending operations and quality giveaways by exceeding specifications. I caught up with Emerson’s Marcelo Carugo who noted that poor recipe management and control throughout the blending process increases variability in product quality, which not only leads to off-spec product that requires reblending…
- 12 Dec 2016
Flexible and Optimized Refining and Petrochemical Operations

Jim Cahill

Petrochemical producers and refiners are having to adjust to big changes over the last couple of years. With the large supply of natural gas and natural gas liquids (NGLs) from shale combined with the opening of U.S. oil exports and new LNG exports, prices and supply chains are being affected dramatically. At this week’s Operational Excellence in Refining and Petrochemicals conference in Houston, Emerson’s Chris Hamlin…
- 30 Sep 2016
Petrochemical and Refining Sessions at the Emerson Exchange Conference

Jim Cahill

The list of workshops, short course, plenary sessions, exhibits and more at the October 24-28 Emerson Exchange conference can be overwhelming. If you’ve already registered, the MyExchange tool can help you find, plan and schedule the sessions you’d like to attend. If you haven’t registered or are considering whether or not to attend, you can use the search tool and filter by industry, job function, technical level…
- 28 Sep 2016
Optimizing Opportunity Crudes in Refining Operations

Jim Cahill

An Environmental Leader article, How Data Analytics is Changing the Oil & Gas Industry , highlights challenges in refining opportunity crudes: Opportunity crudes, such as heavy oil produced from the Canadian oil sands, and light tight oils produced by hydraulic fracturing, are categorized by their inconsistency and the presence of problematic components. They are difficult to process, but discounted in price because…
- 23 Aug 2016
Minimizing Valuable Octane Giveaway

Jim Cahill

With many of the hydrocarbons falling in price, one exception has been octane (C 8 H 18 ). Its structure comes in many forms or isomers—18 according to its Wikipedia entry . These octanes are : …a family of hydrocarbon that are typical components of gasoline. They are colorless liquids that boil around 125 °C (260 °F). One member of the octane family, isooctane is used as a reference standard to benchmark the tendency…
- 19 Aug 2016
Improve It Turnaround Mindset

Jim Cahill

The mindset in most plant and production facility turnarounds is to get things fixed as fast as possible in order to get the facility back on line. At the American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers (AFPM) Annual Meeting earlier this year, Emerson’s Marcelo Carugo teamed with a leading Latin American refiner to provide ideas on enhancing the turnaround planning mindset from “fix it” to also include “improve it”. Turnarounds…
- 25 Jul 2016
Automation Addresses Opportunity Crudes Refining Challenges

Jim Cahill

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 Olsen describe ways that technology can help refiners avoid the challenges of processing crude oils with different properties that what is normally…
- 6 Jul 2016
Better Handling Opportunity Crudes in Refineries

Jim Cahill

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 . In the presentation, he discussed the changes in the industry and shale-based production that led to opportunity crude oils, highlighted areas for…
- 20 Jun 2016
Wireless and Non-Intrusive Sensing Technologies for RefineryTop Quartile Performance

Jim Cahill

Technology changes come at so quickly, it is something difficult to process how they can be used to help us improve performance. In our world of process automation, these changes must be proven over time before being put into widespread use. For example, WirelessHART technology was introduced in 2007 , with widespread acceptance growing over the last several years. Sensing technologies have also advanced greatly with…
- 23 May 2016
Important Opportunities Today in Refineries and Petrochemical Plants

Jim Cahill

This article was first published in the Spanish language— La actualidad del mercado de hidrocarburos ofrece importantes oportunidades en refinerías y petroquímicas in Instrumentacion y Control magazine and is translated and posted with permission from the publisher. Since 2014, the hydrocarbon industry has felt what the economic impact overabundance of crudes and sharp drop in world prices has meant. This situation…
- 11 May 2016
Improving Refinery Operations with Wireless Measurements

Jim Cahill

The American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers annual meeting took place this past March in San Francisco. In a Hydrocarbon Processing magazine recap of day 3 from the conference, Emerson’s Ed Schodowski shared ways to improve refinery performance in an article, Wireless sensing improves refining operations . Ed opened by noting the difference in performance as measured by operating costs: …associated with equipment…
- 9 May 2016
Improve Gasoline Blending to Achieve EPA Tier 3 Regulations

Jim Cahill

For U.S. refineries that produce more than 75M barrels per day, the Environmental Protection Agency’s Tier 3 regulations , which mandate reduced gasoline sulfur content, come into effect in 2017. For smaller refineries, these regulations take effect in 2020. In a Hydrocarbon Processing article, Meet EPA Tier 3 clean fuel regulations through improved blending processes , Emerson’s Marcelo Carugo and Patrick Truesdale…
- 4 Apr 2016
Improving Refinery Performance through Alarm Management

Jim Cahill

Alarms in the process are a normal part of life for plant operators. But, when improperly designed and implemented, they can be more of a nuisance, and potentially mask abnormal situations when they come flooding in. Emerson’s Marcelo Carugo shared an article with me that was published several years ago in Hydrocarbon Engineering magazine. The article, No Cause for Alarm , highlights the journey of an Ergon refinery…
- 14 Jan 2016
Managing the DCS Asset Lifecycle

Jim Cahill

The AFPM [American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers] is: …a trade association representing high-tech American manufacturers of virtually the entire U.S. supply of gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, other fuels and home heating oil, as well as the petrochemicals used as building blocks for thousands of vital products in daily life. At last month’s AFPM Q&A and Technology forum , Emerson’s Marcelo Carugo participated…
- 1 Dec 2015
Secure Out of the Box Myth-Part 1

Jim Cahill

Last month, a full day was devoted to the issues and practices around cybersecurity at the AFPM (American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers) 2015 Q&A and Technology Forum . Emerson’s Neil Peterson was one of the presenters. His presentation, The Myth of “Secure Out of the Box”, explored the expectation of process manufacturers and producers to have their automation vendors: …supply their Industrial Control Systems…
- 12 Nov 2015
Business Results Optimizing Delayed Coker Operations

Jim Cahill

In an earlier post, Optimizing Delayed Coker Operations with Advanced Process Control , we shared the story of optimizing a refinery’s delayed coker process. At the Emerson Exchange conference in Denver last month, John Ward and James Beall teamed up to provide more detail and results from this advanced process control (APC) project success. This process had numerous unmeasured and unquantified disturbances…
- 9 Nov 2015
Increasing Refinery Flexibility to Handle Wide-Ranging Feedstocks

Jim Cahill

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 responsiveness , Emerson’s Tim Olsen and Ed Schodowski look at these challenges and how refiners and addressing them. They open highlighting the increasing abundance…
- 2 Nov 2015
Analyzing and Recommending Improved Refinery Blending Operations

Jim Cahill

For refiners challenged with increasing regulations, blending operations are a major area where automation investments can help meet these regulations and improve operational performance. Emerson’s Marcelo Carugo , who leads the refining and petrochemical industry team, shared the details of a feasibility study they conducted for a North American refiner to identify opportunities to improve the gasoline and diesel blending…
- 23 Sep 2015
Refining and Petrochemical Industry Knowledge Exchange

Jim Cahill

While process automation has concerns spanning all industries, each industry has its unique challenges due the process, regulatory environment, climate, raw materials and other considerations. I mention this since the industry forums on one of the key ways industry-specific knowledge related to process automation is shared at the Emerson Exchange conference. At this year’s October 12-16 conference in Denver, the…
- 1 Sep 2015
Online Analyzers in Refinery In-line Blending Operations

Jim Cahill

For refineries, inline blending of gasoline, distillates, jet fuel and kerosene can improve overall performance by: …reducing the blend time, the need for excessive storage capacities and mix tanks, maintenance manpower and costly quality giveaway. In the final webinar in the Refining Blending Webinar Series , Using online analyzers to blend right the first time , Emerson’s Patrick Truesdale and Topnir Systems…
- 16 Jul 2015
Emerson Exchange Refining and Petrochemical Industry Forum

Tim Olsen

Emerson Global Users Exchange will be in Denver, Colorado this October 12-16, 2015. Early discounted registration ends in one month on August 15th. http://www.emersonexchange.org/americas / The Refining and Petrochemical Industry Forum will take place on Monday afternoon, October 12th. The forum will be 90 minutes and cover three topics with the opportunity for the attendees to participate in the discussion. If you have…
- 16 Jul 2015
Improving Measurement and Final Control in Refinery Blending

Jim Cahill

As global refiners strive to meet ever-tightening regulations, the performance of measurement and final control devices can have a big impact in meeting this challenge. The third Refinery Blending Series webinar recording, Improving measurement and control in blending operations Improving measurement and control in blending operations is now available. Emerson’s Julie Valentine and John Ward review the current business…
- 30 Jun 2015
Optimizing Blend Operations in Pursuit of Regulatory Compliance

Jim Cahill

As U.S. refiners grapple with the Environmental Protection Agency’s Tier 3 regulations , meeting their blending plans will become even more difficult. In the second webinar of the refining blending series , Emerson’s Dr. Doug White addressed the subject of using automation to meet your production plan and Tier 3 regulations . In this recorded webinar, Doug highlights ways: …to gain insight into how automation…
- 17 Jun 2015
Ways for Refineries to Comply with EPA Tier 3 Regulations

Jim Cahill

Process manufacturers and producers are faced with a myriad of regulations at the federal, state and local levels. Here in the U.S., refiners are challenged with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)’s “Tier 3″ regulations , which rule that: …federal gasoline will be required to meet an annual average standard of 10 parts per million (ppm) of sulfur by January 1, 2017. In the first of a series of Refining…
- 3 Jun 2015