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…
Hollow-fiber membrane tubes that are selectively permeable to oxygen have been constructed by researchers from the School of Chemical Engineering and Advanced Materials at Newcastle University (edlinks.chemengonline.com/6899-542), in collaboration with the Chemical Engineering Dept. at Imperial College London (both U.K.).…
Mitsubishi Materials Corp. (edlinks.chemengonline.com/6899-535), with the project support of Petroleum Energy Center, Japan, (both Tokyo), has developed a new thermal process that uses supercritical (SC) water to crack vacuum distillation residue oil (VR) into clean, lighter oil with a high…
Crossflow (CF) filtration is widely used for separating substances with poor filtration properties. As the method’s name implies, a crossflow of the feed continuously flows across the filter membrane in order to wash away material accumulations that clog the membrane…
In the chemical process industries (CPI), pressure is constantly on to improve filtration. The filtration step has to be performed quickly (time is money), efficiently (product loss is money lost), and effectively (energy costs for pumping and drying…
A simpler and more-efficient way to obtain purified terephthalic acid (PTA) has been developed by GTC Technology (Houston, Tex.; edlinks.chemengonline.com/6895-537). In conventional PTA production, p-xylene is oxidized to crude terephthalic acid (CTA), then purified by hydrogenation in an aqueous solution.…