Instruments, industry-provided

The most utilized and reliable process control in the petrofeum and related industries is human observation and surveillance. Local pressure and level gages along with control room instrumentation are provided so that human observation and actions can occur to maintain the proper process conditions. First stage process alarms are provided to alert operators to conditions that they may not have already noticed. Typically when secondary alarm stages are reached, computer control systems employed to automatically implement remedial actions to the process. 

Overall, most of the requirements for a process spectrometer/analyzer are straightforward to implement, but they do require attention at the design level. Another important area, which is FTIR specific, is the user interface and the need to provide for industry standard data communications. Standard software packages do exist for process instrumentation. For prototype development, and even for the front-end interface in a stand-alone mode of operation, software products, such as National Instraments Lab View and the Mathworks MatLab, are also important instrumentation development tools. Note that National Instruments also provides important computer-based electronics and hardware that meet most of the computer interfacing, and system control and communications needs for modem instrumentation. For practical installations, a product known... 

At PPG Industries in Lake Charles, Louisiana, numerous instrument loops provide critical safety, alarm, and shutdown functions. These protective instruments are located on reactors, oil heaters, incinerators, cracking furnaces, compressors, steam-heated vaporizers, kettles, distillation columns, boilers, turbines, and other critical equipment. Process analyzers and flammable vapor detectors also enhance the overall process safety environment. [8]... 

Although today s manufacturers of NIR instruments do provide instruments that are surprisingly consistent and precise from one device to the next, the industrial method development chemist is likely to encounter problems when transferring methods from the laboratory to the production floor on a large scale. The instrumental differences that lead to such problems may or may not be of adequate significance to be identified during the instrument qualification tests. Appropriate use of reference standards for performance qualification can certainly reduce the occurrence of such problems. However, in certain cases, one of the many calibration transfer algorithms that have been discussed in the literature over the last decade may be required for successful transfer and implementation of a calibration. 

There are numerous automatic titrators that employ potentiometric end-point detection. They usually can automatically record the first or second derivative of the titration curve and read out the end-point volume. The sample is placed in the titration vessel, and the titrant, drawn from a reservoir, is placed in a syringe-driven buret. The volume is digitally read from the displacement of the syringe plunger by the electronic driver. Titrators may also employ photometric detection of indicator color changes. An automatic titrator is shown in Figure 14.7. Automatic titrators make volumetric analyses rapid, reproducible, and convenient. While instrumental methods provide many advantages, classical volumetric analyses are still widely used and are very useful, especially for major constituents, for example, in the pharmaceutical industry. 

Studies of rock cores from oilfields are used in the petroleum industry to assess the hydrocarbon content of rock strata and the ease with which the oil can be recovered. The GeoSpecT NMR Rock Core Analyser, a 2 MHz TD-NMR from Oxford Instruments, can provide information on the fluids in oil- and water-saturated rock including oil viscosity and clay-bound water, porosity, fluid distribution, and permeability. Rock cores can be studied at high temperatures and pressures and the instrument can provide diffusion and imaging information. 

Companies can define the scope and focus of the audit in terms of organizational, geographical, functional, and compliance contexts (National Safety Council 1997,102). These boundaries include departments within the organization, activities, and safety areas such as fire protection, industrial hygiene, and machine guarding. The audit instrument should provide the auditor with a thorough understanding of the scope of the audit process. This would ensure that areas that need to be addressed are not bypassed. The audit protocol is the auditor s plan to accomplish the objectives of the audit (National Safety Council 1997,107). The protocol provides the auditor with instructions on the locations to audit and the areas that should be addressed. Descriptions of the situations that indicate compliance and non-compliance with the audit protocol should be included with the audit items. 

The applications of Fourier analysis are extensive in the electronics and instrumentation industry. One typical application, the computation of total harmonic distortion (THD), is described herein. This application provides a measure of the nonlinear distortion, which is introduced to a pure sinusoidal signal when it passes through a system of interest, perhaps an amplifier. The root-mean-square (rms) total harmonic distortion (THDrms) is defined as the ratio of the rms value of the sum of the harmonics, not including the fundamental, to the rms value of the fundamental. 

The analytical needs of the petroleum industry continue to drive the ever-increasing selectivity and sensitivity of GG-MS instrumentation and provide analysts in other industries with new analytical techniques that they may apply as their samples become more complex. New innovations in GC-MS to gain ever greater speed and resolution in GG and MS, such as fast GC-MS, GC-GC-MS, and GC-TOF-MS, will open new avenues of analysis and problem solving for tomorrow s upstream and downstream analysts. 

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