Working in close proximity to the high pressures and temperatures commonly found in the chemical process industries (CPI) is cause enough for concern over a person’s wellbeing; but working in close proximity to chemicals that are considered toxic, hazardous or…
It is with extreme reticence that I author this page, even though I received permission several months ago to do so. FRI had a near miss in 2010, which was identical to a near miss that occurred in 2007. In…
A pilot plant will be established at the University of Newcastle (Newcastle, Australia; www.newcastle.edu.au) to test a new technology for the sequestration of CO2 through mineral carbonation — the reaction with magnesium silicate minerals, such as serpentine, to form mineral…
Researchers at the University of California Irvine (UCI, Irvine CA; www.chem.uci.edu) have taken a cue from nature in devising a way to remove carbon dioxide from fluegas. They are developing a synthetic membrane based on the design and function of…
High fluxes and micro-contaminant reduction have been achieved in a 2.5-m3/h pilot plant to test the performance of ceramic membranes and ozonation in treating wastewater at Melbourne Water’s (www.melbournewater.com.au) Eastern Treatment Plant. The project, to be completed in a few…
Newson Gale Avert static electricity buildup with this hose-continuity tester The OhmGuard Hose-Continuity Tester is designed to continuously ensure that a string of assembled hoses are safely grounded to the transferring vehicle during operations that may produce potentially combustible gas,…
CSIRO Minerals Down Under Flagship (Perth, Western Australia; www.csiro.au/MDU) has developed a method that uses hydrotalcite formation to simultaneously remove contaminants from mining and industrial wastewaters in a single step. Current wastewater-treatment processes typically produce lime-based slurries, often with large…
To comply with increasingly stringent regulations for NOx emissions, operators of industrial plants often turn to low-NOx burners to avoid much more costly post-combustion treatment approaches like selective catalytic reduction (SCR). But low-NOx burners are plagued by significant losses in…
A process that uses magnetic nanoparticles, coated with a reactive material, to clean up contaminated water for human use is being developed at Stanford University (Stanford, Calif.; www.stanford.edu). The nanoscavengers, as they are called, are distributed in the water to…
Ammonia is a promising candidate for scrubbing carbon dioxide from fluegas, since each ammonia molecule can absorb one molecule of CO2, whereas amine absorbers require two molecules to do the same job. However, because ammonia is volatile, the fluegas must…