It is an ‘overkill’ these days when senior management at times thinks that outputs from a reputed software are always beyond doubt and correct while they miss to verify the inputs accuracy. There are several instances, the professionals of AshPhil have come across, where they challenged the outputs from industry proven software run by young engineers showing with pride of results obtained. Her view more

One of the visible hydrocarbon loss in any refinery is flare which in normal operation should be only on pilot flame. However, in reality substantial amount of fuel gas is released to flare system owing to imbalance created by sweating of assets, aggressive energy reduction measures undertaken which inturn lowered the internal fuel need, increased severity of downstream units to raise yield of hig view more

Refinery profitability can be raised by several ways viz. processing of opportunity crudes with confidence, molecular management, eliminating quality give away, operational changes in processing units specially in hydrotreaters which could optimize hydrogen use, sweating assets to match upstream and downstream units capabilities, extensive use of advanced process control and data analytic, change view more

Refineries to lift the bottom line are pushed to higher level of complexities specially at the asian refiners. Loss of containment has been getting continually updated too since process integrity over a period of time say 5 to 10 years of refinery operation demands a holistic relook starting with existing as built P&ID review. It is likely that process envelop has been modified to lift the bottom view more

Most 1st Quartile & Pacesetting Refiners have a robust predictive / preventive system to assure ‘zero incident’ in the complex. Some of the best practices used are - MIQA (Mechanical Integrity and Quality Assurance) analysis, deployment of IOWs (Integrity Operating Windows), Online probes to track vibration, corrosion, fouling, higher temperature, toxic release, etc. Yet, occasionally incident view more