September 2011

Our September issue focuses on Japan with a regional report from Nancy Yamaguchi and the 15 facts feature. This issue also looks at storage options with Flexim and Oreco and catalysts with BASF, Grace Davison, Albemarle and Intercat. Flaring technology is also examined with Baker Hughes, Kurita and Softbits/Flaresim.

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World News
Contract awards, project updates, industry latest, news digest, diary dates, mergers and acquisitions.

Weathering the storm: Japanese energy markets
Nancy Yamaguchi, Contributing Editor, provides an overview of Japan's energy industry in the wake of the recent earthquake.

Global refining review: part 1
Stephen George, KBC Process Technology Ltd, UK, provides an overview of the worldwide refining industry. In the first installment of this two part article, the value in Atlantic Basin refinery transactions is assessed against the context of the global economic downturn.

Spend money to make money
Frank Zhu, Greg Maher and Greg Werba, UOP, a Honeywell Company, USA, show how energy improvements from small capital outlay projects can generate savings, which can then be invested in advanced technology that provides additional energy and cost savings.

Energy management: a polish case study
Jacek Majchrowicz and Marek Herra, Grupa LOTOS S.A., Gdansk refinery, Poland, and Fernán Serralunga and Diego Ruiz, Soteica Europe S.L, Spain, look at online energy management at Grupa LOTOS refinery.

From past to present
Colin Baillie, Grace Davison, Germany, tells the story of the rise of fluid catalytic cracking.

Multi stage reaction catalysts
J. B. McLean, B. W. Hoffer, G. M. Smith, D. M. Stockwell, and A. S. Shackleford, BASF Corporation, Catalysts Division, USA, focus on multi stage reaction catalysts, a breakthrough innovation in FCC manufacturing technology.

Raring to go
Troy Desoto, Albemarle, USA, discusses the current rare earth global supply problem and looks at the technological responses available to help reduce refinery dependence on rare earth elements.

The famous 5
Ray Fletcher and Jeff Oberlin, INTERCAT Inc., USA, explain methods of achieving 5 ppm SOx emissions in full combustion FCC operations.

Bringing on the substitute
Luigi Bressan, Foster Wheeler Italiana, Italy and Axel Düker, Süd-Chemie AG, Germany, look at a novel process for coal based natural gas.

Keeping the pace
Stephen Harrison, Linde Gas, Germany, explains how keeping pace with VOCs involves continuous innovation in calibration gases.

Flare enough
Jennifer Draper and Joseph Stark, Baker Hughes, USA, detail the chemical treatment programmes available to manage flare emissions

No fouling
Berthold Otzisk, Kurita Europe GmbH, Germany, examines chemical cleaning of flare system equipment.

Dynamics break the bottleneck
Prabhat Panigrahy and Jens Balmer, Wintershall, Germany, Miquel Angel Alos and Michael Brodkorb, Inprocess Technology, Spain, and Brian Marshall, Softbits Consultants, UK, demonstrate the ways in which a dynamic flare system modelling study allows for safer blow down, using a Wintershall facility as an example.

Equipped for efficiency
Harald Mahler, Siemens Industry Automation and Drive Technologies, Germany, discusses the implementation of process automation equipment, which is perceived as a key factor in improving the efficiency of LNG processing plants.

Shifting from manual
Carlos Legorreta, Oreco A/S, Denmark, outlines the measures that can be taken to ensure best practice in crude oil tank cleaning operations.

Going underground
Joerg Sacher and Claus Huebel, FLEXIM, Germany, discuss the use of clamp on ultrasonic gas flow measurement in underground gas storage.

Refined enhancement
Peter Ellerby, Cal Gavin, UK, explains how Lukoil has used hiTRAN Thermal Systems to improve heat recovery from a hydrotreatment reactor.

15 facts on... Japan
15 nuggets of information on the Japanese oil and gas sector and its constituent sectors.

September 2011

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