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Article by Brian Yuan, Senior Project Manager
Effective project management is crucial for the success of any engineering endeavor. From planning and scheduling to budgeting and resource allocation, engineering projects demand meticulous attention to detail and coordination among multidisciplinary teams….
Blog by Kshitij Deshmukh, XRG Technologies A vacuum heater located at a major oil refinery experienced tube failures at the top of the radiant section, and inspection showed a substantial layer of coke in the top half of the tubes at the point of failure. It was conjectured by site subject matter experts that there
When you design a steel member for bending stresses, do you go straight to an elastic bending calculation without any further thought? Time to level up! Let me show you why you may be over designing your industrial structures, including fired heaters.
If you had a time machine, what would you tell your younger self about becoming an engineer? I recently faced this query when my college-bound daughter decided to pursue an engineering degree. This exercise inspired a list of the top “dos and don’ts” for young engineers. While schools and employers help develop technical skills, it’s my honor to nurture the non-technical skills that separate good engineers from the great.
Matthew Martin, XRG Technologies, details how the installation of a dispersed combustion system and explains how the technology can help refiners and petrochemical producers reduce emissions.
XRG Technologies, a leader in fired equipment engineering and design, and BayoTech, a leader in hydrogen production, transportation, and storage solutions, announced a new partnership to design and build a proprietary high performance reforming furnace.
The petrochemical and refining industries are facing unprecedented challenges to the current role of fired equipment in industrial processes. Political, social, legislative, and environmental factors are driving both economic and compliance pressures to reduce the reliance on and impact of carbon-intensive production methods. The petroleum refining industry is facing the greatest economic pressures driven in
XRG completed a multi-phase revamp project at Vitol’s VPR Energy refinery in Rotterdam, Netherlands. XRG and VPR worked together to transform the site and equipment into one of Europe’s best environmentally performing sites. PHASE I Background A crude heater in the Netherlands was suffering from the following: Severe tube degradation caused by creep Short run-lengths
By Matthew Martin, XRG Technologies Introduction For many refineries, the delayed coker unit is a vital component of refinery profitability. The tubes used in delayed coker units foul and must be decoked periodically. The shutdown days used to decoke a heater remove it from service. The burner flames used to deliver heat to the tubes
Tulsa, Oklahoma – XRG Technologies and VPR Energy deploy new technology to halve NOx emissions from a major European refinery and reduce greenhouse gas emissions in a world-first. XRG Technologies installed its proprietary Xceed™ system at VPR Energy’s Rotterdam plant. This resulted in improved heater efficiency, lower energy consumption, and ultimately a drop of NOx
Achieving Balance in Combustion Read original article here: Chemical Engineering August 1, 2022 | By Joy Le Pree New hardware combined with monitoring technologies can help optimize combustion now and in the carbon-conscious future Combustion has long been a delicate balancing act. Chemical processors want their combustion systems to be fuel efficient and available for
By Erwin Platvoet, Chief Technology Officer If you didn’t read Part 1 and 2, catch up here! Burner Fouling To keep a fired heater operating optimally it is important to distribute heat as evenly as possible. A maldistribution of heat will result in a poor absorbed heat flux profile and local hot spots. Elevated tube
We are excited to share that XRG Technologies is certified to the ISO 9001:2015 standard. We are delighted to serve our customers through the well-defined and documented processes this certification requires. While we’ve always been committed to quality in our products and services, this certification ensures a more productive environment through faster identification and resolution
By: Joe Tleimat, Senior Principal Engineer Fired Heater Features – What’s That For?! There are four main reasons a brick wall (typically 3-5 bricks tall with some space between bricks) is installed on the floor between the burners and tubes: 1. At heater turndown operation, the flue gas recirculation off the tubes can be cool
By Adam Henderson, Senior Applications Engineer at XRG Technologies If you had a time machine, what would you tell your younger self about becoming an engineer? I recently faced this query when my college-bound daughter decided to pursue an engineering degree. This exercise inspired a list of the top “dos and don’ts” for young engineers.
XRG is celebrating 5 years of service in the oil and gas industry. We are a fired equipment engineering firm specializing in the design and supply of new equipment and the optimization of existing heaters. Our Beginnings The idea that became XRG Technologies was hatched on an airplane during a discussion between the founders about
By Matthew Martin, XRG Technologies Introduction Fired heaters, also called furnaces, use the heat from combustion of hydrocarbons to increase the temperature of a fluid. Direct-fired heaters are common in refining and petrochemicals. In these heaters, flames produced by burners directly irradiate a series of tubes called a coil, which carries the fluid to be
Listen to our podcast with Joe Batir from Energy Transition Solutions at Oil and Gas Global Network (OGGN™). Bailey Hendrix, Matt Martin, and Erwin Platvoet discuss reducing inefficiencies and emissions in fired equipment. They explain one of the first, and arguably the most important step of the refining process, fired heaters warming the feedstock. They outline the process, why
I was working on a particularly problematic heater in 2001 that had been retrofitted with some of the most advanced low NOx burners of the time. Our previous installation made 6 PPM of NOx in the fielded application and the flames looked great…
In our daily lives, we have become accustomed to the frequent introduction of new technology. Every year, cell phone companies roll out their newest offerings and people line up to replace…
Structural Analysis Concepts for Beginner Mechanical Engineers – Part 1 Admittedly, this blog post will be geared toward a small audience. It’s for a recent (or maybe not so recent) graduate with a Mechanical Engineering degree who is designing the structural support of some piece of equipment. If this is you, you were probably given
There’s a whole lotta shaking going on…. but why? A conversation with a long-time colleague at an industry trade show got me thinking about one of the most confounding problems that occur in boilers and furnaces: vibration. Our discussion revolved around the fact that systems today seemed much more prone to vibration problems than in
HOW USING ARRAYS CAN JUSTIFY A RAISE This is a tutorial for some of the newer Excel formulas that manipulate arrays, with heat transfer calculations as the chosen example instead of banana inventory and employee salaries. A large part of performing heat transfer calculations is simply looking up intrinsic properties of the materials you are
Structural Analysis Concepts for Beginner Mechanical Engineers – Part 2 This series of posts introduces concepts that are missing from undergraduate (Mechanical Engineering) curricula but are essential to the safe design of industrial equipment and supporting structures. The first part in the series concerned the beam failure mode of Lateral Torsional Buckling. The second
By Tyler Worden, PE Model Based Definition (sometimes Drafting or Dimensioning or Design) is an iteration to mechanical design that uses a CAD generated 3D model with dimensions, GD&T information, annotations, and other design/fabrication information. The 3D model with the imbedded information becomes the defining document for the design and is the controlling document
XRG Technologies recently completed the revamp of a large vertical cylinder (VC) crude heater, solving several operational problems while increasing efficiency from 78% to 91%. Utilizing CFD modeling, XRG discovered that the existing double circle burner layout was causing flame clouds, hot spots on the tubes, and substantial outlet temperature imbalances between the different radiant
By Erwin Platvoet, Chief Technology Officer Part 3 up next: Burner fouling! If you didn’t read Part 1, catch up here! Exterior Fouling of Radiant Process Tubes The main fouling mechanism on the fireside is corrosion fouling. According to the National Board of Boiler and Pressure Vessel Inspectors, all fossil fuels, with the possible exception
By Erwin Platvoet, Chief Technology Officer Part 2 & 3 up next: Exterior and Burner fouling! Introduction Fouling is the accumulation and formation of unwanted materials on the surfaces of processing equipment. It is an extremely complex phenomenon and considered the major unresolved problem in heat transfer (Bott, 1995). Fouling in refineries and petrochemical plants
By: Matthew Martin, XRG Technologies Fired heaters emit an estimated 400 to 500 million tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) every year. At least 73% of average refinery CO2 emissions come from combustion [1]. For refineries and petrochemical plants focused on reducing greenhouse gas emissions, it makes sense to target CO2 from fired heaters. Fired heaters
Since 2016, ”democratization” has been the buzzword in the simulation industry and is projected to become the new reality. Meintjeis (2016) defined democratization as “making engineering simulation accessible and usable to a much wider audience in a way that supports how they get their work done.” Since then, there has been a huge push to
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