The Monitor

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

With fluctuating demand in your Hydrocarbon Processing, how can you be sure that unit responsibilities aren't creating silos? Answer: Manual or Automatic Hydrocarbon Sampling.

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

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, Downstream, Upstream & Midstream, Liquid & Slurry, Steam & Water

 

Sampling in a hydrocarbon processing plant has its hazards. Tapping into a process line to extract a representative sample requires careful planning, specialized equipment and a partnership with the right hydrocarbon service team. Commonly, however, more focus is spent on the best and safest way to extract the sample, than the method to seal the sample collection bottle. That can be just as hazardous.

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Topics: Downstream, Upstream & Midstream, Liquid & Slurry

Sampling within the hydrocarbon process is essential for gaining visibility into product quality, identifying corrosion and ensuring processes are operating as expected. It occurs at multiple points across virtually every stage of hydrocarbon processing. However, are you giving sampling the attention it needs?

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Topics: Downstream, Upstream & Midstream

As Texas ramps up crude oil production and a “resilient” oil and gas industry is expected to see slow but steady growth in 2017 and beyond, it’s more critical than ever that these refining and petrochemical plants have the technologies and expertise they need to meet demand.

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Topics: Downstream, Upstream & Midstream, Company News

Internal metal corrosion in hazardous liquid, gas transmission and gas-gathering applications is inevitable and continues to cause leaks and catastrophic failures. Due to the fact that internal corrosion is time dependent, the number of incidents could be increasing due to aging pipeline infrastructure. Such disasters can damage the environment and cause costly downtime and waste in pipeline productivity – in addition to astronomical cleanup costs.

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Topics: Downstream, Upstream & Midstream

The chemical compatibility of materials used to construct analytical systems for sampling, transfer, and analysis of oil and gas must be carefully considered to maximize reliability. Specifically, virtually all natural gas samples contain sulfur compounds which need to be precisely quantified for quality purposes. In most applications, sulfur compounds like hydrogen sulfide (H₂S) must be quantified at the parts-per-million (ppm) and sometimes even parts-per-billion (ppb) level.

However, the stainless steel components that typically make up a gas sampler are prone to absorbing sulfur compounds onto the surface. Though this problem may seem negligible in gas samples with a high percentage of sulfur concentrations, it is impossible to accurately quantify sulfur and other active compounds at trace levels without first treating the stainless steel flow path.

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Topics: Upstream & Midstream, Gas

Within the oil and gas industry, hydrocarbon liquids such as crude oil, condensates, and oil and water mixtures must be sampled to yield representative samples for analysis. The resulting data is used for quality control, to determine product properties and composition, and for fiscal calculations, allocations and loss control.

In addition to complying with custody transfer standards such as API 8.2 and ASTM D 4177, the advantages of representative sampling include:

•  Higher return on investment
•  Better loss control
•  Lower operating costs

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Topics: Upstream & Midstream

Building a new plant or updating an existing facility is a complicated, long-term process that involves dozens of agencies and partners. Petrochemical companies are planning to invest over $80 billion in new manufacturing infrastructure, meaning facilities will become more familiar with this process over the next few years.

We’re already seeing a new trend within this building surge: Standardizing sampler designs to maintain consistency in manual sampling systems.

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Topics: Downstream, Upstream & Midstream