The Monitor

Portland cement is a type of cement used in virtually all concrete. It’s manufactured by heating lime, silica, alumina, iron and other materials at high temperatures. The resulting substance is a marble-like ball called “clinker” that is ground, mixed with limestone and gypsum, and used to create concrete. Concrete is a combination of sand and gravel or crushed stone that’s mixed with water and cement; all of which have a major impact on wear and tear of your equipment.

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Topics: Cement, Solids & Powder

Corrosion monitoring and mitigation is essential for ensuring safe operation and reliable natural gas supplies. In fact, corrosion control practices could save up to $875 billion annually. And this doesn’t include the additional safety, operational and environmental benefits that come from corrosion-free equipment.

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Topics: Upstream & Midstream, Liquid & Slurry, Gas

Lipi Hurtado likes a challenge. After steadily climbing the ranks to head of operations over nearly eight years at an oil and gas commodity company, she felt stalled because the company didn’t offer further opportunities for growth or promotion.

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Topics: Company News

Temperature is one of the most critical parameters to control when sampling in a power plant, and accurate and reliable measurements are essential for operational excellence. Incorrect measurements can result in unreliable data that can lead to safety issues and costly equipment damage.

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Topics: Power, Steam & Water

Every day, the world uses about 93 million barrels of crude oil, a demand that rose by 1.3% in 2018 and is soon expected to reach 99 barrels per day or more.

Oil sands mining is one method that oil producers are using to meet this demand. Although oil sands mining represents just a small percentage of crude oil production, it’s predicted that it will produce 3.7 million barrels per day by 2021. As this production increases, so will the need for accurate and efficient sampling processes.

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Topics: Mining, Upstream & Midstream, Solids & Powder, Liquid & Slurry

The United States is expected to produce more than 12 million barrels of oil per day by the end of 2019. With Russia pumping approximately 11 million barrels per day, this milestone could turn America into the world's largest crude producer.

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Topics: Hydrocarbon Processing, Upstream & Midstream, Solids & Powder, Liquid & Slurry

Accurate fiscal calculations, allocations and loss control are essential for a healthy hydrocarbon processing operation. It is also why you need to pay close attention to your sampling program. Sampling downstream and hydrocarbon-related liquids and gases such as crude oil, condensates, and oil and water mixtures means that it is critical to ensure quality control by determining product properties and composition that can directly affect your operations.

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Topics: Hydrocarbon Processing, Solids & Powder, Liquid & Slurry

All food and beverages undergo some form of processing, and those processes need to follow a variety of local, national and international food safety regulations. Buying certified samplers from authorized sellers is critical to ensuring your plant has the right sampling equipment to meet these standards and keep our food supply safe.

Yet many plants purchase sampling equipment outside manufacturers’ authorized distribution channels – also known as the grey market. According to the Harvard Business Review, an estimated $7 billion to $10 billion worth of products are sold every year in the United States outside these authorized channels. Most consumers and businesses buy items on the grey market because prices are generally lower.

But investing in these unauthorized products doesn’t give you the same peace of mind as those with genuine ones, and it could bring you back to square one both financially and in terms of inspection violations.

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Topics: Food & Beverage, Solids & Powder, Liquid & Slurry

 

When chemistry alarms go off in your steam power plant, how do you know if it’s just a nuisance alarm or a real chemical event?

The fact is, most of the time, you don’t. For many plant operators, too many alarms can be worse than none at all. And that confusion can cost you time and money during a real event.

Troubleshooting alarms with manual processes can take hours or even days to find the issue – costing up to $100,000 for every hour your operation is down, or millions if permanent damage occurs. Alarm-related problems cost U.S. industry more than $20 billion a year, driving many plants to reduce alarms and meet the International Society of Automation (ISA) standard of 1 alarm every 10 minutes.

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Topics: Power, Liquid & Slurry, Steam & Water

Plants and facilities of all kinds use sample coolers to cool a sample from a process stream. Cooling samples as part of your steam and water sampling system is essential to maintaining safety and the representativeness of the sample.

For example, if a sample in a power plant is too hot to handle, the operator might throttle the flow to unacceptably low levels, which means the sample is no longer representative or acceptable.

Another example comes from Hydrocarbon processing or Process Analytics. Cooling the process to handle the sample is necessary.   If you take a grab sample of a certain hydrocarbon whether it be of a liquid or a gas, the safest way is to handle the sample at below 140F.  This protects the operator when handling hot samples that need to be physically taken to the lab safely for analysis.   

In order to achieve accurate data, the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), ASTM and ASME recommend cooling water samples to 77°F (25°C) to ensure consistent, accurate test results. 

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Topics: Power, Hydrocarbon Processing, Upstream & Midstream, Liquid & Slurry, Steam & Water