March/April 2013 Inspectioneering Journal Article Index

• Crude Flexibility Management Threat Awareness

  March/April 2013 Inspectioneering Journal By Hearl E. Mead Jr. at Shell Oil Company Over the past few years increased feedstock flexibility has become a growing reality for sustainability of the refining business, requiring processing of more difficult crudes, increased volumes of spot cargoes, and rapid response to crude... Continue reading...

• Driving Better AIM Decisions Through Crude Assays

  March/April 2013 Inspectioneering Journal By Thomas Phan at Bureau Veritas Inspectorate, and Mike Bartholmey at Bureau Veritas Inspectorate For crude oil refiners and traders, information is the lifeblood of their operations and business decisions. The information obtained by crude oil assays, which includes physical properties and compositional analysis of a crude oil, provides... Continue reading...

• Fitness-for-Service Assessment: Severe Local Corrosion

  March/April 2013 Inspectioneering Journal By Greg Garic at Stress Engineering Services, Inc. If an operator finds cracking in a furnace waste heat boiler, excessive thinning in an absorption tower, or severe bulging in a converter, FFS assessments—not standard code analyses—are needed to evaluate the unit’s mechanical... Continue reading...

• PROBLEM: Finding an expert resource to provide training for my team. SOLUTION: E²G API University, E²G Technical Institute (ETI), & Custom

  Partner Content Training options to meet your needs. E²G contracts with API to deliver training programs for FFS, Risk–Based Inspection, Damage Mechanisms, and Pressure Relieving Systems. ETI and Customized Training offers specialized courses based on industry... Continue reading...

• Integrity Management Programs, KPIs and PSM

  March/April 2013 Inspectioneering Journal By Greg Alvarado at Inspectioneering Journal A pattern of requests for key performance indicators (KPIs) related to equipment integrity management (IM) programs has appeared on Inspectioneering’s LinkedIn group discussion as well as other industry forums. Furthermore, the topic came up... Continue reading...

• Non-Contact Ultrasonic Testing with EMAT: Introduction to EMAT

  March/April 2013 Inspectioneering Journal By Borja Lopez at Innerspec Technologies, Inc. This is the first in a series of three articles that will introduce Electro Magnetic Acoustic Transducer (EMAT) and its practical applications in the field of nondestructive testing (NDT). EMAT, or Electro Magnetic Acoustic Transducer, is an... Continue reading...

• Safely Operating Steam Reformers between Turnarounds

  March/April 2013 Inspectioneering Journal By Thomas Fortinberry at Quest Integrity Group, and James R. Widrig at Quest Integrity Steam reformers are critical assets to many refining and chemical manufacturing plants and facilities, and it is well known that the reformer is one of the most challenging assets to maintain and operate. Common problems in reformer operations... Continue reading...

• Transient Computational Fluid Dynamics

  March/April 2013 Inspectioneering Journal By Cliff Knight, P.E. at KnightHawk Engineering, Inc. It is another day at the plant and as usual, your boss calls and says there is a meeting in the conference room that he wants you to attend regarding a compressor failure. That is all you know, but from experience you know it must be something major... Continue reading...

• XRF Inspection of Piping Systems to Reduce Sulfidation Corrosion Risk

  March/April 2013 Inspectioneering Journal By John Morgan at Thermo Fisher Scientific, and William Fotoples at Thermo Fisher Scientific Sulfidic corrosion of piping and equipment within the refining industry continues to be a significant cause of leaks and issues that can lead to early replacements, unplanned outages, and incidents potentially resulting in loss of property and... Continue reading...