By Herman van Roost, Business Development Manager Recycling, Total Refining & Petrochemicals

With the circular economy at everyone’s attention and with the EC’s Plastics Strategy published, the plastics sector is entering a new era. A lot of innovation effort is focused on sorting and recycling technology, even more since China shuts its borders for most plastic waste.
But why are plastics less mature in terms of circularity compared to paper, glass and other commodities ?
Is our recycling technology up to the task ? How to steer innovation ? Is there a role for the virgin resin industry ?
How are fundamental scientific principles interfering with ‘design for recycling ‘?
A need for engineers to step in!

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By Maurice Korpelshoek, Technology Marketing Director, CB&I

Alkylate product remains one of the most favored octane blending components in the refining industry. CB&I and Albemarle have developed and commercially proven a unique solid acid alkylation process, called AlkyClean®, which is the most environmentally advanced and safest processing option to produce alkylate, and an excellent alternative to retrofit existing HF alkylation units. After several years of process development and pilot plant testing, this novel alkylation process was licensed to Shandong Wonfull Petrochemical Group in China. This unique technology is the only demonstrated technology for solid acid alkylation. The results of more than a year of successful operation, together with application of this technology in existing refineries will be discussed.
Alkylate continues to be preferred gasoline blendstock for refiners.
First commercial demonstration of solid acid alkylation technology!
AlkyClean technology is innovative and proven solution for solid acid alkylate production.

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By Marcel Kelder, Sales Manager Advanced Solutions at Yokogawa Europe B.V.

Vertical integration and information sharing is a way of providing correct information throughout the vertical supply chain of a company. Vertical integration is a powerful technology with great potential to help companies sharing their data to answer business questions that traditionally were too time consuming to resolve. The success of a vertical supply chain critically depends on effective ways to share logistical information.
Improving the vertical information flow is a key success factor for vertical supply chains. It makes companies more agile and flexible regarding changing market conditions and provides the single truth to shareholders and other stakeholders. Although the justification for integration may sound logical, the brutal fact is that many companies in Europe are struggling with integration. The question is why.
This presentation explains the importance of vertical integration for companies. It is discussed why it is so difficult to initiate integration programs. Examples will be given of companies that decided to integrate business and operational applications. Best practices to establish vertical integration to complete the project successfully are discussed.

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Excellence in safety is the key to address the increasing complexity of industrial production processes and the increase of rules and regulations both in Europe and internationally. Experts in the field of Safety in Design will give an overview of methodologies and programs  developed to improve process safety in the chemical industry and related sectors.

Alarm about the number of alarms; give back the overview to the operator, Remco Deerenberg, Croon

Companies more and more recognize that the alarm-load for operators has to be reduced. It is true that increasing incidents, production loss and maintenance costs can be related to alarms that were overlooked in the quantity of alarms. Conservative estimates indicate that up to 3% of all losses can be attributed to problems in the alarm management. Via the new directive IEC 62682 Alarm management is likely to become law? Checks on the proper operation of your DCS will increase, just as is happening for other standards regarding safety. Croon has experience to get the Alarm management organized as per the EEMUA directive and to reduce the alarm load. 

Remco Deerenberg (41 years of age) works as Consultant Industrial Automation at Croon Elektrotechniek; as well as Innovation Coordinator since 1st of January. He has a degree at University of Applied Sciences of Utrecht graduating in Sales Management. His areas of expertise are especially related to industrial automation. This combination makes him an outstanding candidate for combining the technical departments and sales-drive departments in such a way that they work together in an advantageous manner for Croon. Presentation file here

Cyber security engineering, Sinclair Koelemij, Honeywell

We introduced the concept of security engineering for industrial control systems. A brief introduction will discuss some major incidents that happened in the industry to show the importance of cyber security. Next we will discuss the challenges a project phases when implementing an industrial control system. Where in the project does cyber security start, where does it end and who are the stakeholders. Are there minimum requirements and standards impacting control system projects?

Sinclair Koelemij is a cyber-security professional who serves as technical leader for EMEA at Honeywell Industrial Cyber Security. He has over 35 years of control systems experience in various engineering, service, management, and consultancy roles, of which the last 14 years in cyber security for industrial control systems. Sinclair participated in the development of several cyber security standards, and has conducted many risk and security assessments in the field of critical infrastructure, he conducted both consultancy and remediation projects. Sinclair completed an M.S. education in Information Technology, a bachelor degree in Informatics, and holds several security certifications, including CISSP-ISSAP, CISM, CRISC, and the physical security certification PSP. Presentation file here

Remnant Life Assessment, Jac de Boer, Tebodin 

Invest in existing and aged assets, renew the assets or maybe relocate assets. Familiar decisions for asset owners who are incessantly faced with a more competitive world, higher safety and environmental standards and higher demands on quality and output. Remnant live assessments for these aging assets give asset owners the input to support their business case and make the proper investment evaluation. Tebodin shares the experience of executed Remnant Live Assessment projects in the Middle East and developed a step approach for Remnant Live Assessments for the European markets.

Mr. Jac de Boer has extensive experience in various facets of asset management and maintenance management. Markets in which he has experience are Oil & Gas, Energy, Utility and Offshore. Presentation file here

Safety requirements for furnace fuel handling systems, Menno van der Bij, Technip

The EN-746 standard and the new ISO-13577 standard both specify the safety requirements for combustion and fuel handling systems that are part of industrial furnaces and associated processing equipment. These standards deal with significant hazards, and events relevant to combustion and fuel handling systems.

This presentation focuses on high temperature furnaces such as steam reforming and cracking furnaces and will address differences in approach between EN 746-2 and ISO 13577; prescriptive and performance based. The differences will be demonstrated with two examples:

• All Burner Closed test versus valve proving
• Safety Integrity Level (SIL) classification to determine Safety Instrumented Function architecture versus predefined architecture

Menno van der Bij is Deputy Manager Electrical and Instrumentation department at Technip Benelux in The Netherlands. He joined KTI, now Technip Benelux, in 1985 as instrument designer and has been responsible for instrument design and engineering in Hydrogen, Ethylene and Gas treatment projects (onshore and offshore). He is member of ISO/TC 244 and CEN/TC 186 “Industrial furnaces and associated process equipment” standardization committees. He participates in the WIB WG functional safety and the NEN SIL-Platform. Presentation file here

Protection against explosion hazard in chemical industry, Dirk Roosendans, Total

The oil industry operates installations with important quantities of flammable substances. A particular hazard is the accidental release of a large quantity of flammable material resulting in the formation and ignition of a flammable cloud within the installation, leading to a devastating vapour cloud explosion or “VCE”. A technology is under development in TOTAL for the mitigation of VCEs based on the injection of inhibitor particles in the cloud. A number of chemicals with inhibiting properties have been tested on laboratory scale and medium scale.

Dirk Roosendans has a master degree in chemical engineering and a master degree in safety engineering and has been working 25 years in the area of process safety. He is currently conducting a PhD on vapour cloud explosion mitigation. He spent the first 10 years of his career as a risk engineer, of which 7 years with the consultancy company Det Norske Veritas (DNV). In 2002, he joined ATOFINA as Process Safety Manager at the headquarters in Brussels. In 2004, Dirk became the corporate Process Safety Manager for Total Petrochemicals and in 2007, he took the position of corporate manager for Health and Industrial Safety in the same organization. In January 2012, upon the merger of the chemicals branch and the refining branch of TOTAL, Dirk Roosendans was appointed corporate Process Safety Manager for this new entity. Presentation file here

'An integrated Project and Operations team - A Success Factor for a Safe Start Up, Prof. Geert Vercruysse, BASF

The gradual transition from a construction zone to a production plant happens during the pre commissioning and commissioning phase of a project. The presentation will show with an example how this was safely executed in the Butadiene Expansion Project at the BASF Antwerp site. A close cooperation with the construction contractors, the use of a turnaround management tool and the set up of an integrated construction and operations team were clearly three success factors for a safe start up.

Prof. Ir. Geert Vercruysse graduated in 1992 at the University of Ghent. He started his career at BASF Antwerp as a production manager for the EB/Styrene plant where he became project manager in 1998 and plant manager in 2001. As of 2004 he became plant manager at the Steamcracker, which is also located on the Antwerp site. In October 2012 he took the responsibility of the Butadiene Project as Project Manager. Since October 2010 Geert combines his professional activities with the role of guest professor in Process Safety Engineering at KU Leuven and University of Ghent. Presentation file here