OREANDA-NEWS. December 26, 2013. Electrical engineers dedicated to solving operational challenges within the petroleum industry gathered recently in Chicago for the 60th annual 2013 Petroleum and Chemical Industry Committee (PCIC) Technical Conference — presented by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), Industry Applications Society (IAS).

The annual event draws together the industry’s best to discuss and provide solutions to help ensure reliability and safety by addressing such challenges as aging equipment, harsh weather conditions and other risk factors that can greatly impede operations.

Engineers from Saudi Aramco and Aramco Services Co. (ASC), who all are members of IEEE, played a major role at the conference, which this year attracted more than 2,000 participants and guests from around the world.

Providing the opening keynote address was Donald Dunn, general supervisor of the ASC Engineering Services Division, who is serving as the 2013-14 chairman of IEEE IAS PCIC.

The PCIC “brand,” he told listeners, is synonymous with excellence. “Throughout its 60-year history,” he said, “the organization raised the bar on excellence by consistently recognizing and awarding engineers who developed and presented papers on the most successful reliability processes.”

He added that the organization has grown on an international scale by staging technical exchange programs around the world (PCIC Brazil, PCIC India, PCIC Europe, PCIC Mexico, and soon, PCIC Middle East). It has also expanded its mentoring and scholarship programs to support the next generation of electrical engineering professionals.

During the technical program, a group of Saudi Aramco engineers presented a case study titled “Rotor Hot Spot Detection and Resolution in Large Oil and Gas Industry Motors.” The paper, authored by Salah Al-Ali, Rami Dabbousi and Yousef Al-Rasheedi, addressed their methodology for detecting rotor hot spots.

Saudi Aramco engineer Basem A. Helmi coauthored a paper that was presented titled “The Application of Power Factor Correction Capacitors to Reserve Spare Capacity of Existing Main Transformers.” It covered a unique application involving power factor capacitors. The other coauthors were engineers from ExxonMobil Research & Engineering Co. and Worley Parsons.

In addition to providing the opening keynote address, Dunn presented a technical paper that he coauthored along with two others from GE Power Conversion. The paper, titled “Black-Out Test vs. UV Camera for Corona Inspection of HV Motor Stator Endwindings,” showed how the use of a UV camera provided safer and more reliable detection of corona versus the previous method that involved turning the lights out and visually inspecting the stator.

During an awards luncheon, Dunn presented ASC engineer Jim Bowen, who is an IEEE Fellow, with a Prize Paper Award (honorable mention) for a technical paper he co-wrote and presented during the 2012 PCIC Technical Conference. It was titled “The Effects of System Grounding, Bus Insulation and Probability on ARC Flash Hazard Reduction — The Missing Link.”