Gas Plant Operators

Tasks

Core Tasks Include:

• Monitor transportation and storage of flammable and other potentially dangerous products to ensure that safety guidelines are followed.
• Monitor equipment functioning, observe temperature, level, and flow gauges, and perform regular unit checks to ensure that all equipment is operating as it should.
• Control operation of compressors, scrubbers, evaporators, and refrigeration equipment to liquefy, compress, or regasify natural gas.
• Start and shut down plant equipment.
• Record, review, and compile operations records, test results, and gauge readings such as temperatures, pressures, concentrations, and flows.
• Adjust temperature, pressure, vacuum, level, flow rate, or transfer of gas to maintain processes at required levels or to correct problems.
• Clean, maintain, and repair equipment, using hand tools, or request that repair and maintenance work be performed.
• Collaborate with other operators to solve unit problems.
• Determine causes of abnormal pressure variances, and make corrective recommendations, such as installation of pipes to relieve overloading.
• Read logsheets to determine product demand and disposition, or to detect malfunctions.
• Test gas, chemicals, and air during processing to assess factors such as purity and moisture content, and to detect quality problems or gas or chemical leaks.
• Contact maintenance crews when necessary.
• Distribute or process gas for utility companies or industrial plants, using panel boards, control boards, and semi-automatic equipment.
• Control equipment to regulate flow and pressure of gas to feedlines of boilers, furnaces, and related steam-generating or heating equipment.
• Signal or direct workers who tend auxiliary equipment.

Supplemental Tasks Include:

• Change charts in recording meters.
• Control fractioning columns, compressors, purifying towers, heat exchangers, and related equipment to extract nitrogen and oxygen from air.
• Calculate gas ratios to detect deviations from specifications, using testing apparatus.
• Operate construction equipment to install and maintain gas distribution systems.

The data sources for the information displayed here include: O*NET™. (Using onet291)