Competitive World

Everyone are competing to be the best and the first in supplying goods, equipments, services, consultancies, etc. In this competitiveness, the end user is the one will benefit. Everyone is competing everywhere in getting job and satisfy the customer. Even not going into detail engineering world, competitiveness can be seen in retail industry where the products are high demand if economical and quality. So, from this competitiveness, grow the innovation where the research is being done to improve the quality compared to existing technology.

Starting from small items such as chemicals for treating until very proprietary processes, there are very huge competitions to get the customer. Those days, it’s very hard to get any licensor for any particular niche technology but today the similar process technology with innovated technology can be found anywhere. Again the customer will get the benefit in getting the best product in market.

Sometimes the customer or the plant owner needs to perform study properly so that the ultimate objective can be achieved. This is basically to avoid any losses to the production as highlighted in previous article which caused losses of diesel due to jellying.

Alternative Energy

Everyday people in every corner in the world are talking about alternative energy or renewable energy. This is not something that people not realize of it but more viability of develop it. This is because of the current situation with availability of fossil fuel, every one chasing to produce oil and gas. The demand also increases as the oil and gas not only used for fuel purpose but also for other derivative products from these oil and gas. All these derivative products are being used everywhere starting from small baby to variation of age of people. We might not really realize on this if not really dealing with petrochemicals where all these oil and gas based products are produced.

Demand for fuel is keep on increasing from time to time, country to country, etc. This is because of the world circumstances where everyone all over the world is utilizing the fuel. We might see in last 15 years, all Chinese in China are using bicycle to move around and very few using cars or bikes. In those days, America is the largest importer and user of oil compared to other region. Recently, off shoring of job is being practiced everywhere to cheaper place. From there everyone starts realizing the important of urbanization and higher living style. Nowadays everyone competing to reach the highest living style which give better lifestyle and sometime not necessarily. So, as the demand increases from time to time and the source is kept on depleting, there must be something to be done to cater energy demand in future.

As the demand increases, everyone is talking about alternative or renewable energy. Sometimes is not really works if the big player such as Shell, Exxon, PETRONAS, Chevron, etc really keen to invent in this alternative energy. However, it can be seen that some of the country still using some of alternative energy for very minor application. Alternative energy like wood, animal dunk, wastes, etc are still being used but not really in commercial scale. For example in India, people quite often use animal dunk as a fuel for many applications.

So, it’s again depending upon the initiative taken by anybody to fully utilize the sources. The direct gas such flaring always has been an issue to come out with zero flaring. However, this is something that very subjective to the law. This is because of the viability of the process with current sources. So, the only way is that by enforcing the law to the operating company to come out zero flaring. For time being this initiative is only considered to produce money rather than comply with obligation of zero flaring. Same goes to waste management in landfill whereby the methane produced is simply flared or vented to atmosphere. This can be monetized if waste management company willing to take initiative to use it as fuel source.

Chartered Engineers

There was question raised in previous article on BEM and IEM regarding the necessity of registering with BEM and/or IEM if registered with some other body such IChemE, AMechE, SPE, etc. Again as an engineer must realize that they are not really professional engineer if there are chartered respective disciplines.

By right it is a regulatory mandatory with Board of Engineers, Malaysia (BEM) if practicing engineering and wants to be certified as professional engineer. In the mean time, engineers can practice parallel to be certified as chartered respective discipline engineer too.

Currently there is no enforcement yet on registering with BEM in Malaysia but as a preparation for facing new challenge as a develop country we as an engineer need to be qualified not only by degree but also acknowledged by regulatory body such as BEM.

Jelly

Jellying is something bad stuff that might occur when dealing or processing liquid most of the time. It might occur directly or indirectly along the process line or even during the storage. Proper guideline is very necessary when dealing with production that having more than one train and even having slightly different configuration. The configuration might not be big difference on the process technology but there might be small differences in using the chemicals when injecting them to prevent corrosion, fouling, or waxing. This eventually will give big impact on the products.

This jellying is not only might occur due to temperature difference but due to different chemical presence in the different train which end up to the same storage tank. This is mainly because of the different chemicals used might cause undesired reaction which gives emulsion to the mixture of different streams. This emulsion eventually might give billions of dollar losses. So, it is really important to evaluate the proper chemicals to be used if there are more than one trains that streaming to same storage tanks.

This is crucially important when dealing with different vendors for the chemical supply. Sometime the owner or operator might want to see the significant benefit from different vendors which might end up with something bad stuffs. So, as a owner of the plant, need to conduct small lab analysis of emulsion for different chemicals sources. Or, the owner might use only vendor at one particular time to see the significant benefits.

Some people might argue that this might be very ridiculous mistake that can be done by human being. However, this is the fact that human errors are come from very ridiculous errors which end up with quite significant impact. This is phenomenon has happened in one of the plant or refinery which caused million dollars losses and some of end users sued the refinery due to consequent impact to their equipments. Luckily the product sold off is not fully distributed to the end users and remedies are given to the affected end users.

Since this already had happened in the refinery/plant itself where they have their own expertise in that particular area. So, there is possibility of to happen it again in end users since there is using different products from different supplier which can cause similar phenomena. This is not simply postulate done from the incident happened in plant/refinery but can be seen lot of cars, machineries, etc that end up with blockage of fuel line and need quite frequent cleaning or maintenance.