How Refiners Work The Gasoline Industry

Posted on | August 10, 2010 | No Comments

The cut and thrust of the gasoline industry is not for the weak. Only the strong will survive. How petrol refining industry exposes them as a unique bunch.

Certainly there is unforgivable stress involved in such destructive competition arena. Ordinary people like us would fall by the wayside early in the game.

This article will reveal the role of refineries in this highly competitive industry. We will briefly discuss refineries, integrated refinery and refinery.

Refiner

The refinery processes (or refines) barrels of crude oil into various products. Gasoline is one of those products. 20% of each barrel of gasoline, our needs.

Ensure that their gasoline refiners to Retail Gas Outlets. They distribute gas by pipeline, truck it to different destinations, and they even send it by rail.

Some refiners supply gasoline to independent dealers. Other offers gasoline jobber. You can believe it or not, some even own their own refineries, gas stations. This has-your-cake-and-eat-it-too-kind integrated refiners.

Integrated refineries

Giant companies like Exxon Mobil, Shell, BP, Sunoco, Texaco and Chevron refineries are integrated. As you can see some marks are heavy hitters in the market.

Yep! Some still have the best of all worlds. Integrated own their own refineries refinery. Moreover, this particular race also owns their own Retail Gasoline Outlet.

In the U.S., nearly 80% of the refineries owned by … you guessed it right, integrated refiners.

Here’s a surprising statistic. As fuel sales we discussed here? Well, many of them disappeared. In 1994, she exploded to about 205,000. Nine years later, she collapsed to about 168,000.

Where have they gone? I could not figure that indicates how many of the integrated refinery gas stations Houdini was during this period?

However, it should always be remembered, you reduce your margins with corners, you need to do to increase your quantities of the same. Perhaps physical limitations to play a role.

Refinery

Refineries swallowed a barrel of crude oil at one end. And from the other side flows a horde of petroleum products. One of which is gasoline. Refineries also distribute their products to retailers.

Refineries are a horse of another color. I say this because over the years has been declining refineries, while at the same time to expand. Roughly over the last 60 years the number of refineries has declined dramatically from 399 down to 149th

While at the same time, the remaining refineries has grown. Technology has played an important role in this expansion. Refineries ran at producing 5 million barrels per day, producing 16 million barrels per day. It states to do more with less.

It is known that late, refineries laugh all the way to the bank. This need not be. You can make a difference. You can take action now.

Photo credited to: tehrantimes.com/index_View.asp?code=172551

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CFD Validation Training and Lecture Series: 9-12 July 2010

Posted on | July 4, 2010 | No Comments

Final call for the CFD Validation training and CFD validation lecture series. The number of seats available for Fluent- 17, CFX- 15, Transat-19 for the Training sessions. Please allow your staffs to register online at:

www.doncomputing.com/registration.html

Also, please advice me if you would like to invite any our presenters at your organisations.

This is a must event you should go to, specially those who are in chemical (fluid flow and multiphase), petroleum (special lecture on oil modeling), mechanical (shocks and compressible flow, Aircraft/Ship Modelling), civil
(Building Services: Energy and Environment, HVAC), fundamental (maths+physics+surface chemistry), IT (parallel/grid computing).

Leading experts in this area will deliver the lectures, sit down with you and guide you to solve the problems.

If you are supervising, pls go to the 10-11th lectures and for the training sessions, you and or pg students can sit down with them to get a better understanding on how to solve your problem.

CSIRO (Australia) and FZD (German) are considered as the vanguards of today’s scientific marathon. Be part of it. Computational modeling is specially important when our experimental materials do not come on time (no offense to anyone).

CFD is a proven technology, and nothing but conservation of mass, momentum, energy.

What Don Computing is offering is a two days’ lectures by various computational modelling experts+one day (12th July) computational validation (cfx/fluent/transat) training. Please support this event by:

1)      Sending the brochure to ALL you know.
or
2)      Sending some contacts in Asia who would be interested to join.

Sorry for the late call. Please visit:
http://www.doncomputing.com/registration.html

Image credited to: vpac.org/files/images/CFD-Cylinder-Flow

How to become a chemical engineer

Posted on | July 2, 2010 | No Comments

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10 Ways to Increase Usage and Citations of Your Article

Posted on | June 27, 2010 | No Comments

Below are some of the sites we (SAGE Marketing) think are key for promoting your technical paper and other channels that will offer a direct way to reach the widest and most appropriate audience.

While social media is increasing in importance, there are other options to draw attention to your latest work:  email your networks or post on listservs and websites about your recent publication, and add your article to your course reading list (if appropriate).

1. Contribute to Wikipedia

We recognize that many students are increasingly using Wikipedia as the starting point for their research. If there are pages that relate to themes, subjects or research that your article covers, add your article as a reference, with a link to it on SAGE Journals Online. If there isn’t a page in existence, why not create one?

2. Join Twitter

Twitter is a micro-blogging service that enables its users to send and read messages known as Tweets. Authors are increasingly promoting their content via Twitter which is then picked up by other researchers and practitioners depending on their search parameters. See the example here. Senders can restrict delivery to those in their circle of friends or, by default, allow open access. Twitter allows you to set up search terms to enable you to monitor what is being talked about in your areas of interest:  You can then comment on the relevant conversations. The more you engage, the more people will follow you to listen to your comments and recommendations. As followers come to you, rather than you approaching them, Twitter is an ideal way to reach new audiences.

3. Add content to YouTube

Content is, of course, no longer as narrow as text and figures. It also includes user-generated content and multi-media content such as podcasts and videos. We are seeing an increasing amount of traffic to our journal sites via YouTube as students use video as an initial way of researching a topic. If you already have video content relating to your specific journal article, please let us know and we will add it to our SAGE YouTube channel.

4. Start blogging

Wondering what to write about? What about:

i. Your area of research and papers that you have published – and/or other related papers in your field of research. Don’t forget to link to them from your blog!

ii. Conferences and training events that you’re due to speak at

iii. Your last conference – were there any interesting questions that came up?

iv. What do you think of any recent press coverage of your subject area?

v. Ask your colleagues and co-researchers to guest blog and stimulate debate.

The more you write, the higher your page will appear in search engine results pages when researchers are searching for content – especially as they are increasingly using Google Scholar. SAGE will provide a blogging template and guidelines – please contact us if you would like further information.

5. Join academic social networking sites

Academics, researchers and practitioners are increasingly using social communities as a way of meeting and conversing with people who share the same research interests. These sites offer an immediate way to monitor what other people are looking at in your field of research or as a way to commission papers around online conversations you think are interesting. If there aren’t any groups talking about your research interests – set one up. Take a look at MyNetReseach and Academici for example. There are others too, perhaps you can ask your colleagues which they are part of to decide what suits you best.

6. Create your own website

Do you have your own website? If not, create one! You can create a very clean and simple site using Google sites. SAGE will provide guidelines on how to engage with your audience using social media functionality.

7. Utilize social bookmarking with CiteULike

CiteULike is a free service to help you to store, organise and share the scholarly papers you are reading. When you see a paper on the web that interests you, you can click one button and have it added to your personal library. CiteULike automatically extracts the citation details, so there’s no need to type them in yourself. It all works from within your web browser so you don’t have to install any software. Because your library is stored on the server, you can access it from any computer with an Internet connection.

8. Join Methodspace

Sponsored by SAGE, Methodspace is a new online community for research methods. On the site, you can connect with other researchers, discuss methodology issues and controversies, Discover and review new resources, find relevant conferences and events, and share and solve methodology problems.

9. Engaged with LinkedIn

LinkedIn is an interconnected network of experienced professionals from around the world with over 55 million members. It is not just for career opportunities. When you create your profile that summarizes your professional expertise and accomplishments, why not include a mention of your articles?

10. Sign up to Facebook

Facebook  lets users add friends and send them messages, and update their personal profiles to notify friends about themselves. Additionally, users can join networks organized by city, workplace, and school or college. You can also join and create groups according to your interests or areas of expertise.

Adopted from: www.sagepub.com

Image credited to: library.rit.edu/whatsnew/journal-applied-science-and-engineering-technology-fall-2008-issue.html

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SCI 2009 Impact Factor Query

Posted on | June 25, 2010 | No Comments

If you want to seek for a journal’s impact factor, I think you can try this website:

http://www.medsciediting.com/sci/index.asp?action=search

What you need is just part of the keyword of the journal and you are on your way to learn what is the latest impact factor of the journal you want to check.

I find it very useful and a fast way to enquire about the impact factors of journals based on JCR/SCI 2009 (Web of Science) database and it’s FREE.

There are also other value added services related to the publication of manuscripts provided by the web host – these are NOT FREE.

You can easily ascertain/verify the accuracy of the data by checking it with the WoS that we subscribe.

P/S: I think the column header in the table written 2008IF is meant for the latest JCR 2009 IF.

IEM upcoming events in Malaysia

Posted on | June 25, 2010 | No Comments

The followings are the IEM upcoming events. Kindly click on the respective download link to download the flyer / brochure.

1. 6 July 2010, Tuesday - APEC Engineer Register, ASEAN Engineer Register and Washington Accord – Organised by APEC Engineers and International Professional Engineers Committee & AER National Monitoring Committee – (2 CPD/PDP) – C&S Lecture Room, Wisma IEM, Petaling Jaya – download form
2. 10 July 2010, Saturday – Talk on “Green Developments & Building Performance Simulation Tools for High Performance Building” – Organised by Consulting Engineering Special Interest Group, IEM – (3 CPD/PDP) – Auditorium Tan Sri Prof. Chin Fung Kee, Wisma IEM, Petaling Jaya – download form
3. 12 July 2010, Monday - Control in Biomedical Engineering – Organised by Chemical Engineering Technical Division, IEM – (2 CPD/PDP) – C&S Lecture Room, Wisma IEM, Petaling Jaya – download form
4. 14 July 2010, Wednesday – Talk on “Engineering Geology – 3 Recent Case Studies” Organised by Geotechnical Engineering Technical Division, IEM – (2 CPD/PDP) – Auditorium Tan Sri Prof. Chin Fung Kee, 3rd floor, Wisma IEM, Petaling Jaya – download form
5. 22 July 2010, Thursday – Talk on “Non Chemical Cooling Water Treatment by Using Ultra Low Frequency Wave Technology” – Organised by Building Services Technical Division, IEM – (2 CPD/PDP) – C&S Lecture Room, Wisma IEM, Petaling Jaya – download form
6. 22 July 2010, Thursday – Talk on “Recent Advances in Column Technologies to improve soft soils” – Organised by Geotechnical Engineering Technical Division, IEM – (2 CPD/PDP) – Auditorium Tan Sri Prof. Chin Fung Kee, 3rd floor, Wisma IEM, Petaling Jaya – download form
7. 24 July 2010, Saturday – 2nd Annual General Meeting of Electronic Engineering Technical Division, IEM – (2 CPD/PDP) – IEM Penang Office, Level 5, 5-A Northam Venture, 37 Jalan Sultan Ahmad Shah, 10050 Penang – download form
8. 24 July 2010, Saturday – Pre AGM Talk on “Standards & Safety of Scaffolding & Falsework” – Organised by Civil & Structural Engineering Technical Division, IEM – (2 CPD/PDP) – C&S Lecture Room, Wisma IEM, Petaling Jaya – download form
9. 29 July 2010, Thursday – Talk on “Deliver on A Promised Service and Earn Economic Fees” – Organised by Consulting Engineering Special Interest Group, IEm – (2 CPD/PDP) – Auditorium Tan Sri Prof. Chin Fung Kee, 3rd floor, Wisma IEM, Petaling Jaya – download form

Digital Signatures Build Greater Efficiency in Engineering

Posted on | June 25, 2010 | No Comments

While organizations across industries have suffered from the worldwide financial crisis, the engineering market took an especially difficult hit. In the face of the crisis, engineering firms are dealing with a serious decline in projects, and a tense rise in competition.

To deal with the industry’s changing landscape, engineering firms are turning to new technologies that enhance collaboration, expedite processes, and cut costs. Digital signatures have proven to be a most prevalent solution among leading AEC firms; they’re now accepted by PE Boards in a vast majority of US states, and they enable these firms to securely and compliantly replace their time-consuming and expensive paper-based processes with electronic ones.

With digital signatures, engineers that are geographically dispersed have the freedom and ability to add their signatures and professional seals in a matter of seconds, and electronically route documents that are sealed from changes to the parties that need to receive them. In this way, digital signatures bind liabilities to their sources, and also enhance collaboration by enabling firms to make use of their best talent, regardless of its location. In addition, digital signatures enable AEC firms to completely eliminate the printing, scanning, physically routing, and archiving processes that go hand-in-hand with paper-based approval processes, and cost an organization not only in resources, but in valuable time. With digital signatures, signed and sealed AutoCAD®, Word, Excel®, and other documents can be delivered in a matter of minutes instead of days.

Today’s digital signature technology makes these types of benefits available for AEC organizations of any size, so it’s no wonder that so many are turning to digital signatures to improve efficiency, cut costs, and gain a crucial competitive advantage. In response to the growing interest in digital signature technology, Engineering News-Record (ENR) is hosting a webinar entitled “Digital Signatures: Designing New Levels of Efficiency and Collaboration”, where Chris Krafft of Black & Veatch, a leading engineering design firm, will discuss his firm’s use of digital signatures. Other speakers will include the President of ZweigWhite (an engineering consultancy), and the CEO of ARX, a leading digital signature solution provider, who will present a recently-published map highlighting digital signature acceptance by PE Boards across the United States. Free registration for this webinar is available here (http://video.webcasts.com/events/pmny001/viewer/index.jsp?eventid=35050).

Universiti Teknologi Malaysia is Research University

Posted on | June 13, 2010 | No Comments

As a staff of Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM), I’m proud that my university has been granted the Research University status by the government of Malaysia. What does this indicate?

It simply means UTM need to perform and deliver more in their research and development. There must be more research, more discoveries, more innovation, more technical paper publications, and importantly more financial support to run all the research.

The following is some words from UTM vice chancellor who happens to be from the chemical engineering discipline.

“On behalf of the University Management Team, I would like to extend my heartiest congratulations and sincere gratitude to all the staff and students of UTM for your consolidated effort and unwavering support to elevate UTM to be a Research University. This is a significant recognition by the government of UTM’s contribution to the progress of the country based on innovation-led economy.”

Let us together strengthen our capacity and enhance our effort towards making UTM more competitive and renowned while contributing to the enrichment of knowledge culture, innovative culture and first class mentality. My best wishes to all the staff for your commitment and service and to all students, stay focused and be diligent in your studies!

Vice Chancellor Zaini Ujang

Visit: www.utm.my/research-university

PDFM 5.0 – Portable Doppler Flow Meter with single-head ultrasonic sensor

Posted on | June 13, 2010 | No Comments

For fast, easy flow readings of dirty or aerated liquids like wastewater, slurries, sludge, cooling water and chemicals. The ultrasonic sensor clamps on the outside of plastic or metal pipes. Features a large, backlit display, totalizer, data logger and 4-20mA output. More info…

Coal-to-Olefins Plants in China Completed

Posted on | June 13, 2010 | No Comments

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