Offshore processing

The vast majority of corrosion design issues faced in marine and offshore engineering involve water in one form or another. In that regard, the two principal media involved are seawater and formation waters (oilfield brines). Seawater, of course, surrounds offshore installations though may also be used as the medium in reservoir injection and other critical offshore process... 

Offshore Process Module Liquid Spill Gas Release NFPA30 1. Hydrants 2. Monitors 3. Hose Reel 4. Overhead Foamwater Deluge 1. NFPA 24 2. NFPA 24 3. NFPA 24 4. NFPA 16... 

A. L. Harmer, Fibre optic sensors for offshore process control instrumentation, Proc. Optical Fibre Sensors Conference (OFS 86), Informal Workshop at Tusukuba Science City, 1986, VII. Pub Institute of Electronics and Communication Engineers of Japan, Tokyo, 1986. 

Development of weldable stainless steels that are cheaper than the conventional ones has been subject of a good deal of attention in recent years. The application of stainless steels is dealt with in Section 10.1.5, where examples of materials selection for offshore process systems are given. 

Khan, E I., Sadiq, R, Husain, T. 2002. Risk-based process safety assessment and control measures design for offshore process facilities. Journal of Hazardous Materials A94 1-36. 

A. Callison, G. Davidson, Offshore processing uses membranes for CO2 removal. Oil Gas Journal (2007). 

Another area pioneered by Heatric in offshore processing using PCHEs is the use of coolers and dewpoint control in gas processing. A typical production stream from the wellhead contains a mixture of oil, condensate, gas and water. Initial separation to try to isolate the useful output - in this case the gas - produces a hot gas stream that is likely to be saturated with both hydrocarbon liquid and water. It is necessary to drop both the hydrocarbon and water dewpoints below the lowest possible export pipeline temperature otherwise two-phase flow may occur and hydrates, one of the undesirables (as is waxing) in offshore processing, may form. 

Much has been reported about the HiGee concept in the chemicals and offshore processing sectors, but its use in the food and drink industries has been less evident. Already referred to in Chapters 8 and 9 in the context of oil and gas processing and the chemicals sector, the use of rotating packed beds of the type described in Chapter 6 has been extended to other application areas by GasTran Systems (see Appendix 4) including deaeration of beverages. 

Offshore processing Gas stripping Centrifugal field - tangential injection into static vessel... 

Trends to do with offshore process safety were summarized in a December 2010 Wall Street Journal article entitled Far Offshore, A Rash of Close Calls (Gold, 2010). The following quotations are taken from that article. 

It has already been noted that trends to do with offshore process safety do not appear to be favorable, but it is much more difficult to find equivalent data for process safety events because catastrophic events occur only rarely. Some data from the insurance industry are shown in Figure 1.7 (courtesy DNV). 

HAZID method is a qualitative risk assessment method. It is a common and frequently used technique within the petroleum industry and in offshore processes. NORSOK Z013 2010 (mainly based on ISO/IEC 31000) is quite relevant in this sector of industry. Therefore, here relevant parts of the standard related to HAZID have been included in brief. The requirements to the hazard identification are as follows ... 

This conditional modifier is intended to represent such factors. However, there is insufficient information available at present to know which of the above factors, if any, are relevant to the probability of explosion. Nor is it clear whether commonly used generic probabilities of explosion (typically derived from onshore and offshore process data and applied to a wide range of leak sizes with some or no relationship to leak size) can be applied to the type of event considered in this report. 

An example would be the use of the OREDA offshore failure rate data book for a RAMS prediction of a proposed offshore process package. 

Dawson J, Bruce K, John DG. Corrosion risk assessment and safety management for offshore processing facilities. Offshore Technology Report 999l06i. Norwich, U.K. Heith and Safety Executive, 2001. 

Gran, B.A., Bye, R., Nyheim, O.M., Okstad, E.H., Seljelid, X, Sklet, S., Vatn, J. Vinnem, XE. 2012. Evaluation of the Risk OMT model for maintenance work on major offshore process equipment. Journal of Loss Prevention in the Process Industries 25(3) 582-593. 

Tveit, O.J., Safety issues on offshore process installation An overview. Journal of Loss Prevention in the Process Industries, 7(4), 1994, 267-272. 

ATEX An EU directive that describes the work that maybe safely carried out in an explosive atmosphere. The areas or zones in a process plant are classified according to the type of hazards, the location, and size, and the likelihood of an explosion. It is applied to mining operations, offshore processing, petrochemical plants, and flour mills, where potentially explosive atmospheres may exist. The name is derived from the French title for the EU directive Appareik et systemes de protection pour les atmospheres explosibles. 

Petronas have embarked on the Peninsular Gas Utilization Project landing gas from offshore, processing and distributing it to the South and to the West Coast. Large quantities of ethane, propane and butane will be produced as a by-product of processing the gas. The prospects are bright for a successful development of the Petrochemical Industry in Malaysia. 

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