Winning the Oil End-Game

This is the title of a presentation given by Emory Lovins at one of the TED sessions in Monterey, California, in 2005 (Technology, Entertainment, Design, at http://www.ted.com/). If you have the time, I would like to read your comments as oil business professionals. Please scroll down to the bottom of the page, and click on the picture you find there.

This should be interesting for you. Please enjoy and comment!

Ciao for now,

Craig

More Questions

Hello again,

I had a phone call from a person from the UK recently, who wanted some general information about this blog, Vacuum Distillation 101, and about me as well.

Aside from some background questions, the first question was, is there any company hidden behind the blog that might be skewing the content in any way? The answer to this question is NO!! Good 2004 Ltd. is a small campany, located in Bulgaria, that belongs 90% to me and 10% to my business partner, who is not an "oily" person. Basically what that means is WYSIWYG, that what you see is what you get! I certainly must have opinions that are not necessarily popular with portions of the refining community; I won't use the blog as a platform to preach about these, but I won't shy away from confrontation, either.

The second question this gentleman had was, is the content strictly limited to vacuum distillation, or can it be / will it be expanded into other areas. If you look at the most recent post, you'll see the answer right here in black-and-white... urrrr white and blue; certainly recipes for mussels coming out of the cooling water system are not a hard-core topic for vacuum distillation! :-) More seriously, the answer is still "no" - and if the situation warrants, I am more than willing to digress, particularly in the direction of unit operations.

I guess that's all for now. I hope everybody enjoys the rest of the summer.

Ciao for now,

Craig

Mussels for Dinner?

Hi there!

Based on the previous post, I had an interesting question (tongue-in-cheek I'm sure) from an old friend who wanted to remain anonymous. It went something like this...

"Do you have any recipes for the mussels that we get out of our sea water cooling system? They seem to like to grow in the tubes where [for them, I suppose] it's nice and warm in the summer. They are a strange shape (look like mini-cigars) but by the time we clean them out, they're already steamed!"

Well Buck, I have to say that if they're already steamed, the choices are rather limited. I suspect if you put them in the refrigerator for a while and then served them on fresh lettuce with horseradish and mayonaise, they could be delicious. At least as long as you didn't have any HC leaks into the cooling water!

Another choice, albeit not so traditional, would be to serve them up in an icecream glass with a little lettuce for decoration and the American shrimp cocktail sauce - ketchup, horseradish, Worcester sauce, and lemon juice.

Any other ideas? :-) Bon appetite!

Craig

Happy 1st of July

Most Americans are not aware that the country just to the north of the US - Canada - has it's national day, Dominion Day, on the 1st of July. For all of those who are "north of the border", congratulations on your special day. It also happens to be the birthday of my step-daughter, Kristina, who lives and works near Hamburg. Happy Birthday Tina! No, I won't say how many years! :-) (but she is a good-looking natural blonde!)

There is not much technical stuff to report on at this point in time. As you can or will see, I have added a few more "bells and whistles" to the blog. I hope you enjoy them!

My wife and I are "enjoying" the weather in central Italy as we prepare to sell our B&B here. "Enjoy" is relative, it's been 32-35°C (lower-to-upper 90's Fahrenheit) every day for the last two weeks - great for relaxing at the pool, but not so great for clean-up, spruce-up type work! Yesterday afternoon, we had a thunderstorm that helped cool us off, at least for a few hours.

As always, I stand ready to answer, or at least comment on, any questions that you might have. One interesting area for this time of year is how to keep your vacuum stable when the temperatures (ambient air and cooling water) climb. A second centers around scaling and corrosion and animal/plant growth in cooling water systems for vacuum-producing equipment. Anybody want to start off?

Ciao for now,

Craig

New Viewers?

Hi there!

Just looking in to see if there were any new viewers or some comments... Please note that everybody is welcome to comment, I just need to take a look at the comments before they're published. That will be to weed out the things that shouldn't be here, like spam, off-subject items (but other technical items will probably be accepted), derogatory comments, and other undesirable things. Write questions (technical or operational) and we'll see who can come up with some answers.

Ciao for now,

Craig