Among the most pressing concerns for the chemical process industries (CPI) are weathering the global economic recession and dealing with anticipated carbon emissions regulations. Switching from oil and gas to biomass for fuel in a CPI plant is a relatively…
Direct-fired heaters find wide application throughout the chemical process industries (CPI) and are common in petroleum refineries, where they are used to preheat petroleum or petroleum-derived feedstocks in advance of downstream process operations. Since excessive internal tube fouling occurs above…
Click here for full pdf version of this article - includes all graphs, charts, tables, and author information EXPANSION TANK A well designed expansion tank: 1. Maintains a static pump-suction head 2. Compensates for temperature-related volume and pressure changes 3.…
Outotec GmbH (Oberursel, Germany), a 100% daughter company of Outotec Oy (Helsinki, Finland; www.outotec.com) has received a €109-million contract for the design, delivery, construction and commissioning of a new oil-shale processing plant to be built in Narva, Estonia for Eesti…
Stirling Energy Systems (SES; Phoenix, Ariz.; www.stirlingenergy.com) and Tessera Solar (Houston; www.tesserasolar.com) recently unveiled four, newly designed solar-power collection dishes at Sandia National Laboratories’ National Solar Thermal Test Facility (Albuquerque, N.M.). The refined design of SunCatchers will be used in…
These new resins are an alternative to metal boiler components In wall-hung condensing boilers for residential use, high-performance Noryl, Ultem and Cycoloy resins can replace traditional metals such as copper and brass used in boiler components, including condenser housings and…
The heat transfer sufaces of coal-fired process heaters and boilers often undergo severe fouling. If left intact, such deposits, consisting of slag from mineral matter contained in the coal, can reduce heat-transfer-surface availability, reduce thermal efficiency and cause corrosion. If…
An innovation that improves the steelmaking efficiency of an electric arc furnace (EAF) by adding calcium carbide to the process has been developed by NuFlux, LLC (Warren, Ohio), a producer of steelmaking fluxes, and Carbide Industries LLC (Louisville, Ky.; www.carbidellc.com),…
Algae offer a ubiquitous, renewable source of oil for fuels and various chemical products ( CE, September 2008, pp. 22–25), but the extraction of oil from the algae cells is an energy-intensive process that involves dewatering and drying the biomass,…
The world’s first demonstration plant combining underground coal gasification and gas-to-liquids (GTL) technologies in the same facility was officially opened on April 22 in Chinchilla, 350 km northwest of Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. The plant is operated by Linc Energy Ltd…