A study on energy and environmental management techniques used in petroleum process industries

Petroleum process industries are one of the most energy and emission intensive sectors throughout the world.There are natural gas processing plant, crude oils and condensate fractionation plant, liquefied natural gas plantand liquefied petroleum gas plant etc. creates environmental pollution by processing and handling of petroleumproducts. The study critically reviewed and discussed the energy and environmental management includingpollution control of petroleum process industries of Bangladesh. They produce both gaseous (process gas, wastegas etc.) and liquid (produced water, waste oil and grease etc.) pollutants. The study found that the liquid pollutantlike waste water is more hazardous and its treatment process is highly complicated due to its higher salinity, morecorrosivity and grease contain characteristics. As part of energy management, the rational use of energy and energyflow diagram of the petroleum industry is presented. Finally, a time frame measures which can be implemented inorder to save energy is outlined. The study concluded that the rational use of energy and proper environmentalmanagement are essential for achieving energy and environmental sustainability of process industries.

A comparative study on economic factors of construction industries in Australia and China

The construction sector produces the facilities needed for a large majority of the production of goods and services, in which a sizeable proportion of Gross Domestic Product is generated. Recent trends in the globalisation of construction markets indicate that many countries consider construction industry competitiveness as crucial, and are working to increase construction productivity, in particular where the construction industries play an important role in their economic development. This paper first points out the research importance in international construction. Based on economic analyses of construction industries, a study is then carried out to focus on the economic sizes and benefits of the Chinese construction industry and to compare them with the Australian construction industry. Results derived from such an international construction comparison will assist in the Australian construction communities understanding the construction markets and industries in China and will benefit in international construction participation and cooperation.

Creative arts practice, creative industries : method and process as cultural capital

The value of artistic research is related not only to the products of creative arts practices, but also to methodological, material and social processes through which they operate.

This paper argues that although creative arts research methods – the use of personally situated, interdisciplinary and emergent approaches – contradict what is usually expected of research, such approaches underpin the innovative capacity of studio enquiry and its implication for extending practice-led research pedagogy across all research disciplines.

Productivity growth and efficiency change in Malaysian manufacturing: recent evidence from disaggregated data

This paper estimates productivity growth in Malaysian manufacturing over the period 1983-1999. Malmquist productivity Indices (MPIs) have been computed using non parametric Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) type linear programming, which show productivity growth sourced from efficiency change and growth in technology. Unlike previous studies, this study identifies the sources of productivity growth in Malaysian manufacturing industries at the five digit breakdown of Malaysian Standard Industrial Classification (MSIC) thereby revealing more industry specific efficiency and technical growth patterns. Results indicated that a high majority of the industries operated with low levels of technical efficiency with little or no improvement over time. Growth estimates revealed that two third of the industries (76 out of total 114 categories) experienced average annual productivity improvement ranging from 0.1% to 7.8%. Average annual technical progress was recorded by 95 industry categories while technical efficiency improvement was achieved by 53 industries. Overall yearly average indicated relatively low productivity growth from the mid 1990’s onwards caused by either efficiency decline or technical regress. Summary results for industries showed that some of the high rates of productivity growth have been recorded in glass and glass products (7.3%), Petroleum and coal (7.2%), industrial chemicals (4.9%) contributed from both efficiency improvement and technical progress ranging from 0.8% to 5.4% and from 1.7% to 4.1%, respectively. These results are expected to have some implications for ongoing and future strategic policy reform in Malaysian manufacturing generating a more sustainable growth for specific industry categories.

Australian mechanical engineers : industries and attributes

The US and UK have had significant influence on the delivery and content of engineering programs both globally and particularly on Australia and yet the industrial profile of Australia has historically been significantly different from that of the US and UK. This paper first presents a study into the differences in industrial profile in the employment of mechanical engineers in the US, UK and Australia. This paper then presents key findings from a role-based study that identified the relative significance of a broad range of attributes for the most common mechanical engineering roles in the six industries that employ the greatest number of Australian mechanical engineers.

Estimating mean exposures from censored data: exposure to benzene in the Australian petroleum industry

A retrospective assessment of exposure to benzene was carried out for a nested case control study of lympho-haematopoietic cancers, including leukaemia, in the Australian petroleum industry. Each job or task in the industry was assigned a Base Estimate (BE) of exposure derived from task-based personal exposure assessments carried out by the company occupational hygienists. The BEs corresponded to the estimated arithmetic mean exposure to benzene for each job or task and were used in a deterministic algorithm to estimate the exposure of subjects in the study. Nearly all of the data sets underlying the BEs were found to contain some values below the limit of detection (LOD) of the sampling and analytical methods and some were very heavily censored; up to 95% of the data were below the LOD in some data sets. It was necessary, therefore, to use a method of calculating the arithmetic mean exposures that took into account the censored data. Three different methods were employed in an attempt to select the most appropriate method for the particular data in the study. A common method is to replace the missing (censored) values with half the detection limit. This method has been recommended for data sets where much of the data are below the limit of detection or where the data are highly skewed; with a geometric standard deviation of 3 or more. Another method, involving replacing the censored data with the limit of detection divided by the square root of 2, has been recommended when relatively few data are below the detection limit or where data are not highly skewed. A third method that was examined is Cohen's method. This involves mathematical extrapolation of the left-hand tail of the distribution, based on the distribution of the uncensored data, and calculation of the maximum likelihood estimate of the arithmetic mean. When these three methods were applied to the data in this study it was found that the first two simple methods give similar results in most cases. Cohen's method on the other hand, gave results that were generally, but not always, higher than simpler methods and in some cases gave extremely high and even implausible estimates of the mean. It appears that if the data deviate substantially from a simple log-normal distribution, particularly if high outliers are present, then Cohen's method produces erratic and unreliable estimates. After examining these results, and both the distributions and proportions of censored data, it was decided that the half limit of detection method was most suitable in this particular study.

An agent-based framework for petroleum information services from distributed heterogeneous data resources

For making good decisions in the area of petroleum production, it is becoming a big problem how to timely gather sufficient and correct information, which may be stored in databases, data files, or on the World Wide Web. In this paper, Gaia methodology and Open Agent Architecture were employed to contribute a framework to solve above problem. The framework consists of three levels, namely, role mode, agent type, and agent instance. The model with five roles is analyzed. Four agent types are designed Six agent instances are developed for constructing the system of petroleum information services. The experimental results show that all agents in the system can work cooperatively to organize and retrieve relevant petroleum information. The successful implementation of the framework shows that agent-based technology can significantly facilitate the construction of complex systems in distributed heterogeneous data resource environment.

Buyer-supplier relationships and brand strategy within commoditised industries : a suggested theoretical framework

Research into commodity markets has identified an increase in non-price based competition. In pursuit of sustainable bases for differentiation, many commodity industries including fresh produce, dairy and meat are introducing branded products. Using the Resource-Based View (RBV), this paper postulates that such branding is influenced by the nature of the buyer-supplier relationship. We suggest that the individual resources and capabilities of trade partners, in addition to the capabilities of that relationship, influence the brand strategies pursued. Moreover, we propose that by combining organisational resources and capabilities and brand strategy in an holistic framework, we may explain variations in buyer-supplier relationship performance.

eCommerce in service industries : extending the socio-technical paradigm

The socio-technical framework (STF) is useful for describing how technologies are embedded in social systems and how people, groups and technologies are interrelated. This perspective, however, lacks theoretical specificity and has limited usefulness in explaining the dynamics of actual situations. In this paper we address the question of how to extend the STF to better analyse technologies in their social context. We build on the STF by including the concept of ‘information ecology’ and research on service provision to suggest a more empirically focussed way of analysing the relationships between people and technologies. In particular, we examine changes that have occurred as B2C eCommerce technologies have been implemented in service organisations, using case study findings from retail banking to introduce the concept of ‘Coactive Commerce Systems’. This concept provides a theoretically based descriptor for understanding the technologically-mediated interrelationships between organisations and their customers.

Relational capabilities and brand strategy within commoditised industries

In many traditionally commoditised industries, organisations are recognising that their product offering alone does not cultivate a competitive advantage. As commoditised products face greater price competition, many are looking for a more sustainable form of differentiation. Within the fresh fruit and vegetable, dairy and meat industries, organisations are increasingly value-adding and focusing on branded offerings to gain such advantage. Whilst this is witnessed within industry, there is little academic evidence that discusses the relationship between dyad partners and how this impacts their branding strategy. This paper conceptually discusses how relationships between buyer and supplier trade partners can impact the branding strategies that are ultimately pursued by dyad participants. The relationship between trade partners is conceptualised using the resource-based view. Consideration is given to relationship complexities, the external environment and performance measurement.