Among the most widely used technologies in the chemical process industries (CPI), spray drying involves dispersing a liquid or slurry in a hot gas to produce a dry powder product. A wide range of pumpable solutions, suspensions and emulsions can…
A variety of performance problems can arise in distillation towers during startup. Many are caused by equipment, hardware or process conditions. Hardware issues may be related to instrumentation, tower internals or ancillaries. Instrumentation malfunctions are also common during startup and…
Every five years or so, a call would come in and once again I would be troubleshooting a certain extraction unit in Canada — usually in the dead of winter. This particular unit had a liquid-liquid extractor, a stripper, a…
I will bet that many readers are familiar with a Teddy Roosevelt quote that includes the following: “It is not the critic who counts…the credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena...” Ralph Weiland has been in…
A vibrating fluidized-bed dryer from this company features multiple temperature-control zones that operate independently to permit a variety of different heating and cooling levels in the same continuous-drying system. The unit is ideal for gently drying grains, cereals, dry foods,…
For the first half of my career, I worked in a group that developed, designed and sold distillation trays. Late during the 1970s, half of that group’s business disappeared — almost overnight — when structured packing replaced trays in very…
Sterilizing-grade filters from this company have all-metal construction, and can perform filtration that meets the requirements of ASTM standard F838-05 for bacterial retention. The sintered, porous-metal filter media products are biocompatible, impervious to solvents and can be used with most…
Introduced to the Spanish market last month, the Targa II hollow-fiber ultrafiltration cartridge is suitable for a wide range of ultrafiltration applications, including industrial water treatment, seawater pretreatment and tertiary wastewater treatment. The element features robust polyethersulfone (PES) membranes that,…
Distillation is one of the most extensively used operations in the chemical process industries (CPI). It is a highly energy-intensive unit operation, and continuously rising energy costs make it imperative to look for ways to reduce energy requirements. Some energy-saving…
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