Becht Engineering has senior process specialists covering all refining and many petrochemical and chemical processes. These include alkylation (HF and sulfuric), aromatics recovery and purification, olefins production and polymer feed pretreatment, catalytic cracking, delayed coking, fluid coking, flexicoking, gas treating, hydrotreating, hydrocracking, reforming including CCR, lubes, sulfur recovery, sour water treating, product and water treatment.
Becht also has specialists in the chemical engineering technology disciplines such as crude oil characterization, mixing, heat transfer, fractionation and separations.
by Dave Dewees & Zumao Chen Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) modeling can be used as an efficient and low-cost alternative to improve the design and operation of a new burner. There are many factors that affect the performance of burners in a charge heater in a refinery. The burner must maintain a certain heat flux […]
Background Refiners have been reforming naphtha to improve its octane or to produce aromatic chemicals since the 1930s. Initially the desired chemical reactions were achieved in Thermal Reformers without the use of catalyst by simply heating the naphtha to about 540°C (1000°F) to “crack” non-aromatics out of the naphtha boiling range. This was effective but […]
…with contributions by Chuck Becht V In this difficult era of decreased margins and rapidly changing markets, onstream reliability is critical to the success of operating facilities. Achieving high onstream reliability can be particularly challenging for complex systems like a CATOFIN® Unit. The CATOFIN® Unit pairs extremely high operating temperatures with a complex control system […]
The first two articles of this series provided a methodical approach to identifying a chloride problem in a hydroprocessing unit, determining the size of the problem, and narrowing it down to a likely source or sources. This final article addresses approaches to dealing with various sources. Step 4 – Managing the Chlorides Now that you […]
The first article of this series introduced the symptoms of a chloride problem in a hydroprocessing unit. In this article, we will explore how to interpret the symptoms by determining how much chloride-containing material we are looking for and identifying the possible or likely source(s) for this amount of material, embodied in Steps 2 and […]
Introduction This series of three articles explores the impacts chlorides may have on hydroprocessing units (hydrotreaters and hydrocrackers). It provides a methodical approach to identifying the typical effects that point toward chlorides, the sources of chlorides in process feed streams, chloride-induced failure mechanisms, methods for identifying chlorides, strategies for chloride control, and a step-by-step process […]
I LOVE Turnarounds! The excitement – The planning – The organizationOne major focus with a million minor tasks that consume you for at least 12 hours a day (or night) As in the movie “Apocalypse Now” with Robert Duval as Lieutenant Colonel Kilgore, delivers the classic line “I love the smell of napalm in the morning,” […]
We work in an industry where there is very little tolerance for errors since we deal with highly hazardous, flammable chemicals. Normally our plants operate with exceptional safety records since they are built to exacting standards, inspected frequently to monitor changes in integrity and personnel are highly trained. However, sometimes human error, cutting corners or […]
by Dave Dewees, Zumao Chen and L. Magnus Gustafsson This 2-part blog deals with CFD modeling of a mixing tee that is often found in industry. Traditional simulation is validated against experiment, as well as a new commercially available method that offers the possibility of substantial solution time reduction. In fact, the new method is shown […]
by Dave Dewees, Zumao Chen and L. Magnus Gustafsson Miss Part 1? Click Here This is the second part of a 2-part blog. In Part 1, the stress-blended eddy simulation (SBES) and large eddy simulation (LES) approaches for simulating turbulence have been validated against test data obtained from a mixing tee. In this part, the […]
