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Technical & Practical

Safety-Instrumented Systems: Focus on Measurement Diagnostics

This article provides guidance to the designer and operator of a safety-instrumented system (SIS), with an emphasis on conducting measurements. The use of best practices to ensure the strength of the overall system design, and the use of instrument diversity…

The Direct Integration Method: A Best Practice for Relief Valve Sizing

What if someone were to tell you that there is one method available for sizing relief valves that applies to virtually every situation, including two-phase flow and supercritical fluids? And what if they told you that method is more accurate…

Runaway Reactions: Ignore the Chemistry at Your Peril

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Avoiding Runaway Reactions

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Design Safety Instrumented Systems with Relevant Data

Users design safety instrumented systems to bring the risk of identified process hazards to within tolerable levels, using application-specific risk models, user inspection schedules, and safety data for the devices under consideration. A key problem when designing such systems is…

Beware of Flow-Accelerated Corrosion

Many chemical process industries (CPI) facilities utilize high-pressure steam generators to produce both electricity and process steam. This technique is commonly known as combined heat and power (CHP). A popular approach in recent years has been to select a combined-cycle…

Responding to Environmental Inspections

One of the most unsettling experiences in a company’s existence may be the surprise regulatory inspection by a representative of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) or a State Environmental Agency. What if you refuse to let them in? What…

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Propylene Production via Metathesis

Propylene is typically considered a co-product in steam crackers and fluid-catalytic-cracking (FCC) processes, which are primarily driven by ethylene and motor gasoline production, respectively. Recently, most U.S. ethylene producers have shifted to lighter feedstocks due to the availability of low-cost…

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Five Steps to Replacing Aged Heat-Transfer Fluid

Changing out used heat-transfer fluid is critical to the efficiency of a heat-transfer fluid system. A well-operated heat-transfer-fluid system can enable efficient production, fewer shut-downs, less maintenance time and lower costs. In order to maintain a sound heat-transfer system, it…

Corrosion in Flexible Burner Hoses

Piping leakage due to corrosion has the potential to cause catastrophic fires and damage to process equipment in petroleum refining and other chemical process industries (CPI) facilities. When such incidents occur, a large amount of damage and a long downtime…