Environment, Health, Safety & Security
Feature Report: Industrial Gas Applications
Technical and specialty gases find use in many synthesis processes and a number of unit operations, in analysis and in plant maintenance. This article outlines applications for gases in fine and specialty chemistry, ranging from synthesis processes and inerting to…
Combining Rupture Disks with Safety Relief Valves
Protecting process systems from overpressurization is vital throughout the chemical process industries (CPI). Both safety relief valves and rupture disks are commonly used for this purpose. Sometimes the combination of a relief valve with a rupture disk can add service…
Eye-and-Face Personal Protective Equipment
Eye injuries of all types occur at a rate of more than 2,000 per day in the U.S., and half of those occur in the workplace. In 2006, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported over 52,000 workplace injuries…
Chementator: Sonicating slurries speeds soil remediation
Ultrasound has been applied, with limited success, for the remediation of contaminated soil. Up to now, the approach has been to first extract the contaminant from the soil into a liquid, which is then passed through a sono-reactor where the…
Comments on Pressure Relief System Design
I would like to draw your attention to a few points on the November 2008 article, Pressure Relief System Design (pp. 40–45): 1. Pressure drop and pressure loss: The inlet pressure “drop” that the author refers to under Relief system…
Controlling Emissions With Ceramic Filters
Ceramic filters are well suited for high-temperature processes that are subject to strict emissions limits, including those for dioxins About Incineration Incineration processes are being widely used more and more to deal with the disposal of waste materials. In many…
Chementator: More efforts to capture CO2 from power plants
Aiming at bringing down the barriers to the commercial deployment of post-combustion capture (PCC) of CO2, an Australian team from CSIRO Energy Technology (Newcastle, New South Wales; www.csiro.au), CSIRO Energy Technology (Clayton South, Victoria), and several other research organizations has…
Newsfront: Capturing CO2
With last month’s proclamation by President-elect Barack Obama that his administration would move to cut U.S. greenhouse-gas emissions, it appears that the U.S. may finally get in step with the 182 countries that have signed the Kyoto Protocol. Obama pledged…
Newsfront: Dust collection: Clean up your act
When it comes to dust collection in the chemical process industries (CPI), there exists a wide variety of needs. For example, folks in dyes and pigments have a different set of dust collection challenges than those in the pharmaceutical industry,…
Cleaning syngas at high temperatures
RTI International (Research Triangle Park, N.C.; www.rti.org), in partnership with Eastman Chemical Co. (Kingsport, Tenn.) and the U.S. Dept. of Energy (DOE; Washington, D.C.), has developed a modular technology package that removes numerous contaminants — including sulfur, NH3, HCN, HCl…