I serve as the moderator for all the webinars Chemical Processing hosts, so I’m always up to date on my webinar viewing. However, that’s not the case for everyone. Scheduling conflicts and unforeseen issues arise, keeping folks from attending a live event. That’s why we always offer our webinars for on-demand viewing. You can access all of these programs — and sign up for future events (which you can then watch on-demand at your leisure) via our webinar series portal: https://info.chemicalprocessing.com/chemical-processing-webinars-2018.
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At press time, we have eight events from 2018 all ready for you to view (as well as 15 presentations from 2017). And, by year’s end, we’ll have 14. Here are details on what’s available right now:
Advanced Process Filtration using Porous Metal Technology — Our presenter, Patrick Hill, chemical process engineer and project manager at Mott Corporation, points out despite the increased focus on safety, efficiency and sustainability, plant optimization efforts often overlook filtration. Porous metal filtration media frequently are used in applications involving high temperatures, pressures, corrosive chemistry or precious metal catalysts to remove hazards and inefficiencies caused by mechanical filtration.
State of the Chemical Industry — Dr. Thomas Kevin Swift, CBE, chief economist and managing director at the American Chemistry Council, offers a very interesting mid-year update on how the U.S. chemical industry is faring. He also discusses what near- and mid-term prospects look like and highlights factors such as the strength of key markets, the industry's competitive position as far as feedstocks, and the prospects for growth and investment in facilities.
Non-Intrusive Flow Metering for the Chemical Industry — The aptly named Frank Flow, industry manager at Flexim Americas, reviews the basics of the technology and how meters are used to monitor energy consumption and improve process control. He also takes a deeper dive into why clamp-on meters often make sense for process metering and covers their capabilities and limitations.
Cut Through The Noise To Make The Right Technology Investments — Matt Newton, senior portfolio marketing manager at AVEVA, uses case studies to point out challenges the chemical industry faces and how technology can help in areas such as regulatory compliance requirements, retiring workforce, process design and optimization, unified supply chain strategy, and maximizing return on investment on assets.
Evergreening — Managing risk in the face of change — Alysson Ferreira, process safety consultant and project lead for Siemens Oil & Gas Consulting, explains that evergreening is a structured program to manage a facility’s process risk exposure in the face of incessant change. He reviews the practice of evergreening applied to pressure relief and flare systems with relevant examples and cases studies that validate the program.
Process Safety Series: (Our process safety guru, Dr. M. Sam Mannan, regents professor and director of the Mary Kay O’Connor Process Safety Center hosts the entire Process Safety Series.)
Safe Work Practices — In this installment, he outlines safe work practices, which are a set of guidelines on how to perform a specific task that may not always be done in exactly the same way. Safe work practices should include lockout/tagout, decontamination of equipment, hot-work permit, confined-space entry, control of access, shift handover and simultaneous operations. Risk assessment and risk management principles should be integrated into safe work practices.
Management of Change (MOC) — Dr. Mannan points out that a number of catastrophic incidents have stemmed from process changes handled incorrectly. He summarizes the diversity of implementation practices in industry as well as the traps and shortcomings encountered in implementing and maintaining effective MOC programs. Some of the issues addressed include: scope, policy development, change and replacement-in-kind, size of MOC programs, emergency and temporary changes, MOC record management, audits, MOC software and MOC program awareness training.
Impact of Facility Siting on Preventing Incidents — Facility siting is a method of examining the safety of the layout of a new or existing plant site. Dr. Mannan notes that building inherent safety into a site can reduce both cost and complexity.
While I certainly hope you can attend our live events, I won’t take it personally if you opt to check out our informative webinars whenever it suits your schedule.
