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Environment, Health, Safety & Security

FDA Form 483: Minimizing FDA Inspection Citations

As an owner or manager of a company whose product is regulated by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), you will, at some point, be subjected to an FDA inspection. And once an inspection is underway in your facility,…

Global Air-Pollution Regulations: Variation is the Norm

The chemical process industries (CPI) are, by their very nature, global in scope. While chemical process operators share many common aspects (in terms of the use of chemical engineering unit operations), the location of their operation brings about different requirements…

An unexpected safety lesson

About thirty years ago, my golf foursome learned an important safety lesson and we credited the Dalai Lama. We were all big fans of the movie “Caddyshack.” In that movie, Bill Murray’s character talks about caddying in the Himalayans for…

Green chemistry reaps rewards

Each year, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA; Washington, D.C.; www.epa.gov) honors innovative technologies that make an impact in reducing hazards to human health and the environment. As these are goals that the chemical process industries (CPI) continuously strive for,…

Selectively recover CO with this soft nano-porous material

Professor Susumu Kitagawa’s group at Kyoto University (Kyoto, www.sbchem.kyoto-u.ac.jp/kitagawa-lab/index-e.html) has developed a new soft nanoporous material that selectively adsorbs carbon monoxide from gas mixtures. The researchers believe their achievement will enable the separation and recycling of CO from the emissions…

Chemical Protective Clothing

Workers in the chemical process industries (CPI) can wear chemical protective clothing to protect themselves from exposure to potentially hazardous chemicals in the form of vapor, liquid and solid particles. While chemical protective clothing has not been regulated to the…

Remote Thermal Sensing

By making it easy to detect heat anomalies, thermal cameras and infrared thermometers support preventive and predictive maintenance Rising temperatures and rapid or excessive heat buildup are useful markers for determining the operational health of many types of machinery and…

Bacteria and algae team-up to tackle arsenic-contaminated water

Australian researchers have developed a method of cleaning arsenic out of contaminated water by combining the effects of bacteria and microalgae. Professor Megh Mallavarapu and his team, from the Cooperative Research Center for Contamination Assessment and Remediation of the Environment…

This graphite burner enables on-demand treatment of offgases

Offgases containing compounds of chlorine or fluorine are typically burned to enable the recovery of HCl or HF and prevent release into the environment. However, conventional combustion chambers require a long time to heat up, and thus are typically run…

A new adsorbent to recover uranium and other heavy metals from wastewater

A new method for removing uranium and other heavy metals (HMs) from wastewater has been developed by researchers at the University of Eastern Finland (Joensuu; www.uef.fi). The technology has been licensed by Oy Chemec AB (Espoo, Finland; www.chemec.fi), which plans…