ExxonMobil Corp. (Irving, Tex.; edlinks.chemengonline.com/7373-537) plans to spend more than $100 million on a commercial demonstration of its Controlled Freeze Zone (CFZ) technology for removing carbon dioxide from natural gas. The plant, to be located at the company’s Shute Creek…
Packed Columns [1] A packed column is a vertical, cylindrical pressure vessel containing one or more sections of a packing material over whose surface the liquid flows downward by gravity, as a film or as droplets, between packing elements. Vapor…
Separation by a membrane is achieved by creating a boundary between different bulk gas or liquid mixtures. As different solvents and solutes flow through a membrane at different rates, separation is achieved. Here, we will focus on three filtration techniques:…
Although nanoporous silica membranes are promising systems for the molecular separation of gases and liquids, they lack microstructural stability in the presence of water at temperatures as low as 60°C. Prolonged exposure to water causes hydrolysis, resulting in the formation…
Hitachi Zosen Corp. (Hitz; Tokyo, Japan; edlinks.chemengonline.com/7369-531) is commercializing a new membrane for a hybrid-distillation system (HDS) that is especially suitable for dehydrating ethanol and isopropanol. The HDS can produce 99.7 vol.% ethanol from ethanol-water mixtures with 10 vol.% H2O…
Centrifugation is the method of choice in the chemical process industries (CPI) for separating solids from liquids. It relies on the G-forces generated by high-speed rotation to recover solids or liquids from slurries, as well as clarify liquids or classify…
A method for the purification of single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) in four sequential steps — oxidative pretreatment, acid treatment, silica dissolution, and froth flotation — has been proposed by a team from the Petroleum and Petrochemical College, Chulalongkorn University (Bangkok,…
Ethanol production is an energy-intensive process in which about 50% of the cost is for distillation and dehydration of the ethanol. A membrane system that does the same job, but reduces the energy consumption by up to 50%, has been…
Last month at the BioProcess International Conference (Boston, Mass.; October 1–3), Novasep Process (Boothwyn, Pa.; edlinks.chemengonline.com/6901-533) launched a new technology for downstream processing of biologicals. BioSC (Biopharmaceutical Sequential Chromatography) uses a process known as sequential multi-column continuous chromatography (SMCC), which…
The world’s power plants, industrial companies and mines will spend $6.1 billion in 2007 for fabric filter equipment, systems and elements to clean up stack gases, according to a report by McIlvaine Co. (Northfield, Ill.; edlinks.chemengonline.com/6900-546). Further, revenues for the…