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.
On December 29, 1972 one the Nation’s worst airline accidents occurred as Eastern Air Lines Flight 401 crashed into the Florida Everglades killing 101 of the passengers and crew. A National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) investigation attributed the cause of the crash to crew distraction. While on approach, the crew noted that a landing gear […]
On May 18, 2017, the California Department of Industrial Relations’ Occupational Safety and Health Standards (CalOSHA) board approved a new regulation that changes how Process Safety Management (PSM) is handled for oil refineries within the state of California. This regulation was approved in response to high-profile industry incidents in the state of California in the […]
Walking the Walk…Management Commitment My assumption is if you are reading this, you have some involvement in, or responsibility for, Process Safety Management (PSM) in your facility. OSHA’s Standard for Hazardous Materials, 29 CFR 1910.119, is a mere 21 pages long including 12 pages of “non-mandatory” appendices — but should it be your responsibility, what […]
Compliance with the Process Safety Management rule, OSHA 1910.119, is a requirement for plants processing certain highly hazardous materials exceeding threshold quantities. The rule requires the owner to demonstrate all equipment has been purchased and installed in accordance with recognized industry standards. Maintenance practices must also be according to Recognized and Generally Accepted Good Engineering […]
Becht advisors have provided a wide array of experience and background to our clients including serving as technical experts in a legal setting on many financially significant cases. In one example, our team was hired to develop economics impact of a broken five-year term agreement for our client to recover a wide range of petroleum […]
The process team at Becht Engineering brings decades of experience from serving in the R&D of major corporations and also from representing a wide variety of Becht Engineering clients. We have observed and evaluated new technology from both sides of the fence…as employees or for large corporations who do R&D internally to outpace their competition, […]
Today’s young process engineers have tools available to them that we “old timers” only dreamed about. Although smaller and some medium sized companies will not have the items listed below, most large refining and or petrochemical operations have the following: Real-time and historical plant operating data available on his/her desk top computers; Real-time and historical […]
The Process Safety Management rule (PSM), OSHA 1910.119, was implemented in the early 90’s, more than 20 years ago. Implementation was driven by a number of tragic accidents in the process industry. However, despite the long history of the rule and multiple preventable, catastrophic incidents, many companies still have not fully implemented PSM. Companies that […]
A demister pad is similar to an air filter except instead of removing dust particles from a stream of air for example, it removes micron-size liquid particles from a liquid/vapor stream often found in many industrial processes. An air filter prevents dust particles from entering downstream equipment; similarly a demister prevents liquid droplets from entering […]
