The history of the ABPG is relatively short. It was formed in late 1993 when a group representing the refining industry, design engineering and an independent consultant met to discuss the possibility of developing a real-world database for amine unit operations. The impetus for this initial meeting was a stated interest by many refiners, both major and independent, in evaluating their amine unit operations with respect to others in the industry.

The early meetings were devoted to developing an amine unit survey questionnaire and the ABPG Best Practices Manual. The responses from the questionnaire formed the 1994 database and includes 82 amine units.

In subsequent meetings, ABPG members analyzed the 1994 database and developed two articles that were published in industry trade journals. The database was also the basis for the ABPG Amine Users Symposium held in 1995.

In 1995 ABPG members developed a new survey questionnaire that focused on amine unit cost control. The results of this survey database were published in the Summer 1997 issue of Petroleum Technology Quarterly.

In 1997, the ABPG established a Data Exchange Network (DEN) to provide members with an open forum to post questions and exchange operating experiences.

Objective:

The ABPG objective is to provide an open forum for members to exchange operating experiences for the purpose of benchmarking, troubleshooting or developing best practices leading to improved unit operations and reliability for hydrocarbon processing units including amine treating, sour water treating, sulfur recovery and tail gas treating units.

Annually, the ABPG compiles a summary of operating experiences on a pertinent topic and reports this information to the global hydrocarbon processing industry through published articles in trade journals.

Following is a collection of articles that have been published. To view these documents you must use Acrobat Reader available from Adobe. The files range in size from 2.5mb to 6mb.