Processing & Handling
Tubing for peristaltic dosing pumps
Peristaltic pumps work by compressing a tube against a circular pump housing with rollers on a rotating arm. The fluid that is ahead of the roller gets pushed forward, while new fluid is drawn into the tube by the vacuum…
Lignin recovery process could improve profits for papermakers
Recovery boilers, in which pulp and paper companies burn spent black liquor from the kraft pulping process to recover and recycle sodium and sulfur, are a bottleneck in many paper mills. The reason is that they operate at their upper…
A new catalyst enables room-temperature interconversion of CO2 and formic acid
A new catalyst that converts H2 and CO2 into formic acid under mild conditions has been developed by researchers at the Solar Light Energy Conversion Group of Energy Technology Research Institute, National Institute for Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST;…
Plastics with soy-derived protein reduce petroleum use
New biocomposite plastics that combine soybean-meal protein with conventional plastic resins allow significantly lower use of petroleum-based chemicals in polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP) manufacturing. The new class of bioplastics incorporates soybean-meal protein, which is chemically bound to the PE…
Dose chemical reactors at ‘high’ flowrates with this syringe pump
The Atlas Syringe Pump XL allows automated volumetric dosing from 100 µL/min to 200 mL/min. The pump features two syringes that can be independently controlled or combined to enable continuous flow at pressures up to 6 bars. The pump is…
Integrated energy-efficient design boosts aromatics production
A Samsung petrochemicals facility in South Korea will be the first to feature a suite of energy efficiency technologies developed by UOP LLC (Des Plaines, Ill., www.uop.com) for improved aromatics production. A number of UOP aromatics-processing design features and materials…
This new PET process eliminates production steps
A new process for generating sheets of polyethylene terephthalate (PET) eliminates several production steps used in the traditional process, offering greatly reduced energy use and improved polymer properties. Developed by Octal Petrochemicals LLC FZC (Muscat, Oman; www.octal.com), the direct-to-sheet PET…
Drastically reduce energy consumption with exergy recuperation
A distillation process that consumes 85% less energy than traditional methods has been demonstrated by researchers from the University of Tokyo’s Institute of Industrial Science (www.energy.iis.u-tokyo.ac.jp) and Nippon Steel Engineering (NSE, both Tokyo, www.nsc-eng.co.jp). The technique, which involves the incorporation…
This new LTS catalyst delivers a boost for H2 and NH3 production
In conventional hydrogen and ammonia plants, the final conversion of CO to H2 occurs across the low-temperature shift (LTS) catalyst. This makes the LTS catalyst one of the most important catalysts in the plant — even small changes in its…
This new route to PLA requires no organic solvent or metal catalyst
A process to make polylactic acid (PLA) that requires no solvent or metal catalyst has been developed by Ricoh Co. (Ricoh; Tokyo, www.ricoh.com), in cooperation with Shizuoka University. Ricoh’s continuous PLA process is based on a commercially available organic catalyst…