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Environment, Health, Safety & Security

Newsfront: Teaching an Old Dog New Tricks

  While it may be one of the oldest chemical processes known to mankind, fermentation is getting a high-tech face lift as industrial biotech firms put a fresh spin on the age-old technology in an effort to develop advanced products…

Environmental Manager: A Checklist for Safer Chemical Batch Reactions

A good understanding of the reaction chemistry is needed for a safe process design It is a fact that safety-related incidents do occur in the chemical process industries (CPI). These incidents have, in part, led to increased attention to reactive-chemical…

Chementator: An ammonia-based CO2-capture process moves several steps closer to commercialization  

Last month, the first pilot project that used chilled ammonia to capture carbon dioxide from the fluegas (FG) of a coal-fired power plant started operating at the 1,210-MW We Energies’ Pleasant Prairie power plant in Wisconsin. Alstom (Windsor, Conn.; edlinks.chemengonline.com/7371-531)…

Chementator: Halogenated activated carbon reduces mercury emissions from a coal-fired plant  

In its first full-scale test on a coal-fired power plant, halogenated activated carbon (AC) made by ADA-ES, Inc. (Littleton, Colo.; edlinks.chemengonline.com/7371-537) has reduced mercury emissions by more than 90%. The significance of the results is that the plant burns western…

Chementator: A platinum-free catalytic converter    

Nippon Steel Materials Co., Ltd. (NSM; Tokyo, Japan; edlinks.chemengonline.com/7371-538) has developed a new catalyst for combustion engines that contains 70% less precious metals than conventional catalytic converters. The catalyst is expected to not only lead to lower costs, but also…

Chementator: Switchgrass to syngas  

Although theoretically promising 80% more energy than is required to grow and convert to cellulosic ethanol, switchgrass has proven to be a difficult fuel source to break down cost effectively. With $1 million from the U.S. Depts. of Agriculture (USDA)…

Chementator: Sugar-beet pulp may cut the cost of biodegradable plastic    

Sugar-beet processors in the U.S. generate approximately 40 million tons of fiber-rich sugar-beet pulp every year as a byproduct of sucrose extraction. Most of it is used as livestock feed or in pet food. Researchers with the U.S. Agricultural Research…

Chementator: CO2-capture demo…  

Basin Electric Power Cooperative (BEPC; Bismarck, N.D.) has selected the CO2-capture technology of Powerspan Corp. (Portsmouth, N.H.; edlinks.chemengonline.com/7371-546) for a commercial demonstration at BEPC’s Antelope Station coal-fired power plant, located near Beulah, North Dakota. Approximately 1 million ton/yr of CO2…

Chementator: CO2-capture pilot test    

CSIRO (Melbourne, Australia; edlinks.chemengonline.com/7371-547) and China’s Thermal Power Research Institute (Xi’an) plan to install a pilot plant at the Huaneng Beijing Co-generation Power Plant that will capture 3,000 m.t./yr of CO2 using an amine-based process. Click here for a full…

Letters: Packing fires and permanganate

July, Causes and Prevention of Packing Fires, p. 34. I thought the article was very timely and informative and appreciate being a reference for your paper. However, after reviewing the information provided regarding potassium permanganate (especially Table 1), I must…