Applications Dehumidification by cooling or dessication has a variety of applications, including: Preventing moisture regain. Nearly all materials have some affinity for moisture based on surface characteristics and the amount of surface exposed to humid air. Moisture regain occurs when…
A system for controlling oxides-of-nitrogen (NOx) emissions from catalyst regenerators in fluid catalytic crackers (FCCs) has cut NOx output to below 40 ppm (and as low as 25 ppm under certain conditions) in its first commercial installation, according to its…
Petroleum refiners can have the option to produce more diesel fuel or propylene from their fluid catalytic crackers, depending on the demand, through a new process offered by Shell Global Solutions (edlinks.chemengonline.com/7373-541). The process enables a typical FCC (processing a…
Carbone Lorraine (CL; Paris, France; edlinks.chemengonline.com/7372-538) is launching a new welded-plate heat exchanger, dubbed Heatex, which features plates made of tantalum CL-Clad. The patented CL-Clad technology involves the brazing of steel onto "reactive" metals, such as tantalum, titanium and zirconium,…
BP (London; edlinks.chemengonline.com/7372-548) and ConocoPhillips (Houston, Tex.; edlinks.chemengonline.com/7372-549) have combined resources to start Denali — the Alaska Gas Pipeline. The pipeline will move approximately 4 billion ft 3 /d of natural gas to markets, and is said to be the…
CLC bio (Aarhus, Denmark; edlinks.chemengonline.com/7372-550) and partners from Danish research institutions and crop-enhancing firms have started a project to develop potatoes into a multipurpose crop, which is not only used for animal and human food, but also for energy (biofuel)…
Industrial furnaces, or direct-fired heaters, are only as good as the burners that supply them with thermal energy for heat transfer and endothermic chemical reactions. This article presents equations that permit calculation of such important burner-operating characteristics as flame…
Batch reactor systems are used extensively in the pharmaceutical and fine chemical industries for the manufacture of small-volume, high-value products, in either dedicated or multipurpose production facilities. Stable and reproducible operating conditions are of great importance in order to achieve…
Tube plugging is probably the most frequently used maintenance and repair technique for the tube side of an exchanger. This article provides information on how to locate the positions of tube failures and discusses why it is important to know…
The Seebeck effect — the direct conversion of a temperature difference to electricity — is responsible for the operation of thermocouples. But taking advantage of this phenomenon to make electricity from waste heat in so-called thermoelectric (TE) devices has been…