Valero's Benicia refinery has another "event" - San FranciscoSolano County Buzz

A tiny leak at Valero Energy Corp.'s Benicia oil refinery on Tuesday sparked concern but apparentlylittle else in a community still alarmed about a series of unscheduled vapor releases in June.

Officials at the refinery on the shores of Suisun Bay reported the hydrogen and sulfide leak Tuesdayat around 3:30 p.m., regional air quality regulators acknowledged.

Experts from the Bay Area Air Quality. Most installed pumps were not originally sourced for theircurrent function. Typically, a line in a plant is relocated and a pump that once providedcooling waterto an injection molding machine is now needed to transfer oil from a rail car to a tank. Sadly, thisleads to numerous problems for the pump and the company. Pumps operate where the pump curvecrosses the system curve. When you move a pump from one system to another, this means that thesystem curve is different. This new system may cause the pump to operate away from its bestefficiency point, leading to noise and other component failures that are simply rail system symptomsof a mis-matched pump and system.Management District were still monitoring operations at therefinery when the new leak occurred.Â

"The hydrocracker unit experienced a tiny, pinhole leak," refinery spokeswoman Sue Fisher Jonestold the Times-Herald newspaper in nearby Vallejo.

"The leak was stopped and the repair of the valve is under way." she said.

The vapor release was too small to harm members of the public or even to impact production at therefinery, company officials said.

The air district continues to monitor Valero daily in the wake of a series of violations from June 17 toJune 20.

Those incidents included the release of dark plumes that injured four refinery workers and triggeredseveral air-pollution complaints in the community.

Fisher Jones said Tuesday's release was not related to the refinery's ongoing overhaul of its cokerunit, which was shut down June 20.

San Antonio, Tex.-based Valero acquired the Benicia Refinery from Exxon Corp. There industrialwater pump are a few straightforward refinements which are able to be added to a classical

centrifugal or positive displacement pump. For pumps with overhung impellers, moving to a solidshaft is a easy adjustment over the typical sleeved shafts. Mechanical seals may be upgradedthrough tungsten carbide faces, and elastomers are able to be changed to Viton. In conclusion,magnetic bearing protectors are certainly a huge step upover the lip seals which most chemicalpumps use to keep bearing sump oil clean.

in 2000 as one of a series of conditions imposed by federal regulators on the 1999 merger betweenExxon and Mobil Corp.

Valero recently agreed to pay $14 million to community groups in Benicia in a settlement over therefinery's environmental impact on the southern Solano County city.