During career coaching to hundreds of individuals, I’ve come to realize that the people who take longest to find meaningful employment tend to commit the same blunders. Singled out here are ten of the most egregious career-stalling maneuvers. If you…
Nippoh Chemicals Co. (Tokyo; edlinks.chemengonline.com/5830-539), is developing a continuous, vapor-phase process to produce hydroiodic acid as an alternative to the conventional liquid-phase batch process. Over the next few months, the company will test the new process in a 30-m.t./yr pilot…
Although many new biodiesel plants are sprouting up around the world, Perstorp Oxo AB’s (Stenungsund Sweden) 160,000 m.t./yr rapeseed-methyl-esters (RME) facility, now under construction at Stenungsund, will be the first to have a reactor made from duplex stainless steel. The…
It’s an old saw, but I’ve long held that process development is very much a team effort. Developing safe, robust and scaleable chemical processes calls for close collaboration between synthesis chemists, process development engineers and pilot plant personnel.…
Qatar Petroleum (Doha; edlinks.chemengonline.com/5829-542) and Norsk Hydro A/S (Oslo, Norway; edlinks.chemengonline.com/5829-543) have formed a joint venture company, Qatalum, to build and operate what is claimed as the largest, initial-phase greenfield aluminum smelter ever constructed. The smelter will have an annual…
Early next year, Nippoh Chemicals Co. (Tokyo; edlinks.chemengonline.com/5829-532) plans to build a 1,000-m.t./yr plant for producing the pharmaceutical precursor trimethyl orthoacetate (1,1,1-trimethoxyethane). The facility will utilize a continuous-flow, microreactor-based process that Nippoh Chemicals developed in cooperation with professor Jun-ichi Yoshida…
Typical process utilities include electricity, process steam, refrigerants, compressed air, cooling water, heated water, hot oil, process water, demineralized water, municipal water, and river, lake, or ocean water. For preliminary cost estimates, waste disposal cost can also be…
For any of us who have kept up in recent years with the business news (happenings at Enron and some major Wall Street firms, say), it seems safe to assume that, nowadays at least, ethical behavior and personal honesty are…
Engineers often need to predict the cost of piping and pipefitting associated with a process unit. Even though detailed prices are available, finding and organizing them takes time and costs money. For those needing a quick method of…
A patented moisture-control technology (MCT) developed by CSIRO Plant Industry (edlinks.chemengonline.com/5827-534), with cooperation from Stellar Films Group (both Melbourne, Australia; edlinks.chemengonline.com/5827-535), has shown it can maintain field freshness of selected fruit and vegetables during extended periods of storage and shipping.…