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Separation Processes

Cooling Towers: Water-Treatment Options Advance

Water-treatment programs for cooling towers have evolved in recent years, favoring non-phosphorus programs today. This article reviews the impact on water chemistry and operating reliability Cooling towers are a critical component of many industrial facilities. Cooling towers evaporate only pure…

Invista and Koch-Glitsch expand partnership to offer ExoS fuel-refining technology

INVISTA Performance Technologies (IPT; Wichita, Kan.; www.invista.com) and Koch-Glitsch (Wichita, Kan.; www.koch-glitsch.com), affiliates of Koch Industries Inc., announced today an expansion of their partnership to offer the proprietary ExoS technology to customers. The technology allows refineries to generate an olefin…

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These ‘imprinted’ resin beads selectively recover gold from leaching processes

In early April, 6th Wave Innovations Corp. (Salt Lake City, Utah; www.6wic.com) and CyPlus GmbH (Hanau-Wolfgang, Germany; www.cyplus.com) signed a sales and marketing representative agreement for IXOS nanotech gold extraction resin for the mining industry. CyPlus will represent 6th Wave…

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This P-recovery process is market-ready

At PowTech 2019 this month (Nuremberg, Germany), Glatt Ingenieurtechnik GmbH (Weimar, Germany; www.glatt.com) introduced a waste-free process that recycles the phosphorus from sewage-sludge ash to produce ready-to-use, high-quality fertilizers. The market-ready process fulfills the legal obligation of the German fertilizer…

Distillation Column Internals: It’s What’s on the Inside that Counts

New column internals boost efficiency and improve reliability of distillation towers In the chemical process industries (CPI), the majority of separations are done via distillation columns. And, when the rest of the process relies upon those columns, inefficiencies, bottlenecks and…

Chemical Recycling Makes Waste Plastic a Resource

With an eye toward a circular economy, technology developers are advancing a host of new approaches to chemical recycling of post-use commodity plastics Plastics are indispensable parts of almost every sector of the economy, with wide-ranging economic, environmental and convenience…

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Design and Calculation Methods for Uniflow Cyclones

Uniflow cyclones can be effective solid-gas separation equipment when space is limited. Presented here are design and calculation methods for uniflow cyclones aimed at widening the industrial usefulness of these devices Cyclone separators are, in addition to fabric filters, electrostatic…

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A low-pressure process to leach metals from laterite ores

Queensland Pacific Metals (Brisbane, Australia), a subsidiary of Pure Minerals (Perth, Australia; www.pureminerals.com.au) will use Direct Nickel Projects’ (Perth, Australia) proprietary technology to process New Caledonian nickel and cobalt ore, following favorable test results. Core Metallurgy (Brisbane, Australia) has assessed…

An Investigation of Premature Flooding in a Distillation Column

Surprising observations regarding flooding in the upper fractionation trays of an atmospheric crude-petroleum distillation column are investigated In industial distillation processes, flooding is an abnormal, but relatively common, process condition in which liquid accumulates in the column. The accumulation may…

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Commercializing Process Technologies

New technologies can provide competitive advantages compared to established processes, but significant effort is required to transition a promising concept into a commercial reality Many students study chemical engineering with the aspiration of someday inventing an innovative process that could…