Tom Meek - Shell Puget Sound
Emory Weber - RTI
Lee Griffith - Clean Harbors
Brent Dell - ZymeFlow
Participants in this 2-hour group discussion will hear from each chemical cleaning company regarding recommended best practices for
- Chemistry requirements in different areas of the unit – focusing on differences from normal degassing versus ashphaltene/coke removal, and pyrophoric neutralization
- Injection practices like location, carrier, bleeder cleaning, and safety
- Waste collection and disposal
After the short presentations (~15 min) by each vendor, a group discussion will follow. Participants are encouraged to come prepared to discuss their previous successes and issues with chemical cleaning in a recent turnaround.
From Emory Weber with RTI
It is critical that the “oil out to blinding” stage of a turnaround is executed safely and efficiently. Any day lost on the front end of a turnaround puts the overall schedule at risk. Refined Technologies has experience working across multiple sites, clients, and turnarounds for more than 15 years yielding key learnings that optimize the efficiency of shutdowns. Knowing these top risks and best practices for shutdown will help turnaround planners, engineers, and contractors plan and execute the most effective projects. In our presentation, we will discuss the top five risks to an efficient shutdown, planning best practices, and how to turn a great plan into a great shutdown.
Refinery process units shut down for a few major reasons: Turnarounds for Planned Maintenance (PM), Capital Project Integration (often both activities happen at the same time), or emergencies. In all these cases, the shutdowns can be broken into four big stages: Pre-Shutdown, Cleaning/Clearing, Maintenance and Capital Project Work, and Unit Start-up and Commissioning.
The Clearing/Cleaning stage will be the critical path as heavy project work cannot start until the unit is safe for entry. Safe for entry means LEL free, H2S free, benzene free, and the equipment is clean enough to work on. Our presentation will highlight the top Risks and Best Practices on this part of the process, which we will often refer to as “oil out to blinding.”
There are five big areas of risk that must be addressed to optimize oil out to blinding. For each of these risk areas there are clear and practical considerations that, once put into place, will transform standard practices into best practices. Each of the considerations are covered in detail within the presentation material we will present.
