Monday, May 25, 2009

Sweet Sour Crude

How many people those really realize of this sweet sour crude? I would say that many of them not really aware of this sweet sour crude. Many of us have heard of sweet sour fish, sweet sour chicken, etc, which is actually reflecting the type of cooking. However, in oil and gas industry these are totally different categories which reflecting lot of differences. Those differences in fact not really recognized even by those personnel from oil and gas industry. Again, oil and gas industry is not really a small scope of world which can be understood by all the personnel from the industry.

There are different levels of understanding of this sweet and sour crude. Some might say that sweet crude is more expensive than sour crude which is right and they are not really sure why that is so. Besides, some people might say that refinery configuration would be different in term of the process involved which is also absolutely right. There are people would say that sour crude is nasty crude whereby sweet crude something good crude. All these are absolutely correct but there is a reason why those people saying so.

The main culprit that causing this nattiness is actually all those unwanted gaseous such as carbon dioxide (CO2), sulfur, etc that need to be treated before further processed. So, the main difference to the refinery is that additional unit area which requires additional cost. However, it does not mean that the sour crude is unwanted crude relative to sweet crude. Obviously the sweet may not to be treated to remove all those unwanted gaseous since it is within allowable limit to the downstream unit where the rest of refinery taking place such as reforming which is actually the main process to convert long chain into aromatics which gives the higher octane number.

Sunday, May 17, 2009

Industry vs. Academic

Industry and academic are very interrelated between both two. As in engineering world, they need to be some collaboration continuously in order to invent new technology which at the end will be used widely and benefited by both two sectors.

This is very crucial because of the continuity of the technology which actually is contributed from either area where any small scale or lab result that is done by academic which from university later will be used by industry to maximize the profit of the company as an ultimate objective. This is again is not something that any industry can straight away take any formulation or research done by university but there will be some agreement such as industry or more specifically an identified company that willing to pump in some fund to make move the research or development to be done without any monetary burden. This is because of the insufficient fund for academic or university stopping them from moving on with any new innovation to be invented.

In addition, there is necessity also from industry people as alumni to support their school they graduated from at least from knowledge or experience to enhance the syllabus of the school/university so that can ease the accreditation process for the related department of engineering. This is the reason why almost all the faculty that contributing growth of industrialist will have at least one industry advisor. Besides, there would be cases where academic will invite industry people to evaluate for the final year project of the students. This is really important because of the feedback that will be highlighted by them usually more than practical rather than totally theory.

Last but not least, there are some limitations to make them collaborating these areas because of some agreement issues or understanding arguments. This is the reason both industry and academic need to clarify all the commercial issues to avoid any misunderstandings. So, in order to avoid any confusion both parties should really clear of the contract of agreement.