Environmental Regulations: Leading the Way Toward Restructuring the Petroleum Industry.

The floating-roof tank has been the most widely used method of storage of volatile petroleum products since the first demonstration b Chicago Bridge & Iron Company (CB&I) in 1923. There have been many changes and design improvements to that first pan-style-floating roof. A floating roof is a complex structure. It must be designed to remain buoyant even when exposed to combined loads from varying process, weather and product conditions. There is a continued demand for improved floating-roof tanks to store a wide range of petroleum and petrochemical products in compliance with state and federal environmental regulations. Floating roofs are used in open top tanks (EFRT), inside tanks with fixed roofs (IFRT), or in tanks that are totally closed where no product evaporative losses are permitted for release to the atmosphere. This very special type of installation is referred to as a zero emission storage tank (ZEST). Products that might have been stored in basic fixed roof tanks must now utilize a floating roof to limit evaporative emissions to the atmosphere. High vapor pressure condensate service and blended heavy crude oils also present new design challenges to the floating roof tank industry. This paper will review the most prominent styles of floating roofs from 1923 to the present. Design and operating limits for current da floating-roof structures are presented. New trends in environmental regulations and the potential impact on the design and operation of floating-roof tanks will be presented. Current maintenance practices and the effect on Life Cycle Cost Management of the storage syste are also reviewed.

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Experience From Norwegian Programme on Ageing and Life Extension

Volume 3: Materials Technology; Jan Vugts Symposium on Design Methodology of Offshore Structures; Jo Pinkster Symposium on Second Order Wave Drift Forces on Floating Structures; Johan Wichers Symposium on Mooring of Floating Structures in Waves ◽

10.1115/omae2011-50046 ◽

2011 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Gerhard Ersdal ◽

Erik Ho¨rnlund ◽

Hans Spilde

Keyword(s):

Petroleum Industry ◽

Life Extension ◽

Standards And Guidelines ◽

Special Priority ◽

The Way

In 2005, the Petroleum Safety Authority Norway (PSA), gave special priority to a programme of ageing and life extension. The programme comprised technical investigations into how ageing will reduce the safety of the facilities and how this can be managed, plus cooperation with the petroleum industry to develop standards and guidelines for assessment of ageing facilities for life extension. In addition, audits have looked into the way operators are dealing with the implications of ageing facilities. This paper summarizes the outcome of the programme and the experience gained from it.

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Modeling Hydrocarbon Processing

International Journal of Chemical Reactor Engineering ◽

10.2202/1542-6580.1321 ◽

2006 ◽

Vol 3 (1) ◽

Author(s):

Teh C Ho

Keyword(s):

Low Cost ◽

Petroleum Industry ◽

Operating Conditions ◽

Process Models ◽

Market Demand ◽

Practical Applications ◽

Hydrocarbon Processing ◽

Minimum Capital ◽

Microscopic Interactions ◽

The Way

Driven by the global competition and market demand, the petroleum industry is under increasing pressure to produce clean, high-value products from low-cost feedstocks with minimum capital outlays. This has triggered an urgent need to develop robust process models capable of predicting the effects of feedstock composition, operating conditions, and catalyst properties on product quality. To develop such models, one generally splits the reaction mixture at the molecular level, examines microscopic interactions among individual reactions, and then works all the way up to the macroscopic level. Along the way one performs lumping to keep the size and complexity of the problem at bay. This is not only crucial for practical applications, but also important for fundamental understanding, since one does not want to lose sight of the forest for too many trees. This paper gives an overview of new and emerging theoretical tools for building kinetic models for hydrocarbon processing. While the emphasis is on reaction kinetics, the question of reducing hydrodynamic complexities is addressed as well.

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