March 2023

The March issue of Hydrocarbon Engineering begins with a Guest Comment from the President and CEO of the AFPM, Chet Thompson, before a detailed regional report examining changing production, price and demand in the US gasoline market. Other topics featured in this issue include digitalisation, cybersecurity, separation technology, catalysts, heat technology, and much more.

This month's front cover is brought to you by UNICAT.

American gasoline: conditional love
Nancy Yamaguchi, Contributing Editor, examines changing production, price and demand in the US gasoline market.

The next digital frontier: industrial autonomous operations
Praveen Sam, Honeywell, USA, introduces a novel digital operating approach within the oil and gas industry.

Digitalisation with a clearer view
Mika Kulin, Neste, explains how the company’s refinery in Porvoo, Finland, is integrating its different digital sources and automation systems into a single source of information.

Fending off threat
Mike Hoffman, Dragos Inc., USA, discusses how refineries can protect critical ICS/OT systems from cyberattacks.

Building resilient infrastructure
Leo Simonovich, Siemens Energy, USA, lists the important steps to be taken in order to develop a more mature cybersecurity posture.

A step change in catalyst development
Mark Stuckey, UNICAT Catalyst Technologies LLC, discusses the emergence of next generation spherical catalysts and their impact on yield increases and reduced carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions in tubular reformers.

Racing to find the right separation technology
Vic Scalco, General Atomics Electromagnetic Systems, USA, details the importance of selecting the correct separation technology in order to support growing petrochemical demand.

Trays for mega towers
Ang Chew Peng, Hou Peng-Cheng and Senthil Krishnamoorthy, Sulzer, discuss various types of high-performance trays for large diameter propylene fractionators.

Lessons in VDU performance
Jim Lines, Graham Corp., USA, lists the VDU ejector system field lessons learned by a performance improvement engineer, through the lens of four specific case studies.

Time for a retrofit?
Nathan Hill, CALGAVIN, UK, discusses how to increase product retention through retrofitting condensers.

Breaking down the barriers
Dennis Long, Watlow, USA, explains the role that electric process heaters will have to play in the decarbonisation of hydrocarbon processing.

Heater tube cleaning and verification
Tom Gilmartin, Zerosumheater and a consultant for Quest Integrity, considers the effect of fouling on heater services, and introduces a new approach for confirming coil cleanliness.

Monitor, manage and minimise
Mark Naples, Umicore Coating Services Ltd, details how connected gas detection technology can help companies to comply with ESG needs.

March 2023

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