Equipment In Process Industries Research Articles

A risk-based approach to identify safety-critical equipment in process industries

Establishing safety-critical equipment (SCE) in process industries is essential to reduce the risk of catastrophic accidents due to equipment failure. Despite the significant role of risk in the definition of SCE, there are still challenges to identifying and prioritizing risk-based SCE that require further investigation. To address the current gap, a quantitative risk-based approach is presented to identify and prioritize SCE. To do this, Hazard and operability study (HAZOP) is employed for hazard identification; the Bow-tie model and Bayesian network are used for probabilistic cause-consequence analysis, and consequence modelling is used to complete the risk-based approach. The approach here not only aids in making the system more reliable by recognizing the equipment and barriers that reduce the risk of major accidents, but it also aids in the development of maintenance management by reducing the associated costs. The proposed framework then is employed to identify and rank SCE in a high-toxicity petrochemical processing unit. The results show that there are 9 major accident scenarios in the studied unit. As well, rapture in the Phosgene absorber tower 36611 is the worst scenario with a fatality number of 247 and a probability of 0.01/yr. Also, the results indicate that 22 pieces of equipment have the highest safety criticality rating and need more attention in the maintenance plan.

Risk Based Design, Manufacture and Maintenance of Extreme Pressure Equipment

In recent years, with the rapid change of global economic situation, quality deterioration of resources and adjustment of energy structure, the pressure-bearing equipments are developing gradually to the extreme direction of high temperature, cryogenic temperature, complex medium corrosion, ultrabig volume, ultrabig wall thickness, etc. It becomes an important subject confronted by Chinese scientific and technical workers of processing equipment to research breaking through the key design, manufacture and maintenance technology of important pressure equipments under extreme conditions and realize localization of important equipment and ensure long-cycle safe operation. The current main development trends of pressure equipment in process industry is described, the deficiency existing in the past standards and codes and technical methods for design, manufacture and operation management of Chinese pressure equipments are analyzed, and the main achievements obtained in the aspects of design, manufacture and maintenance of important pressure equipment under extreme conditions such as high temperature, cryogenic temperature, complex corrosion, ultrabig volume, ultrabig wall thickness, etc. and several technical difficulties solved are introduced, and the main research works requiring further development are prospected.

Study of a Modified Differential Inductance Measurement Circuit as Position Transducer of a Power Cylinder

A power cylinder is essential equipment in process industries. Since it acts as a final control element with its piston positioned by a positioner having an input signal from a controller, the indication of actual position of the piston becomes very much important in analyzing the actual operation of a process. In this paper, a modified differential inductance measurement circuit has been proposed to design the position transducer of a power cylinder. The design of the circuit, along with the principle of operation, has been described in this paper. The operation of the proposed circuit has been experimentally studied, and the experimental results are reported in this paper. The proposed transducer has been found to have very good linearity and repeatability.

Damage of Tubular Equipment in Process Industry

Damage of Tubular Equipment in Process Industry

Compact Fiber Optic Dynamic Light Scattering System

Fiber optic dynamic light scattering (FODLS) is fast developing as a technique for sizing particles in concentrated dispersions. Fiber optic systems have the potential to be made into online particle size measuring equipment in process industries. Two different laser light sources were used to study monodisperse polystyrene latex dispersion with different particle sizes and volume fractions. The apparent diffusion coefficients were a function of particle size, volume fraction, and signal to noise ratios. The apparent diffusion coefficient data showed that FODLS probes collective diffusion for smaller particles and self diffusion for larger particles. It was observed that for a polydisperse concentrated dispersion, both self and collective diffusion were probed by FODLS. This means that the apparent diffusion coefficient can be used only as a relative quantity.