Chemical Engineering
Milling in the Pharmaceutical Industry
Milling active ingredients combines equipment selection, material characterization, and process characterization, with the aim of improving and controlling the properties of the solid crystalline drug substance. These topics are discussed here Milling is a common technique used for the reduction…
Lessons Learned in the Classroom: Tower Pressure and Capacity
Henry Kister shares lessons learned from troubleshooting distillation towers In my courses, I discuss the effect of column operating pressure on flooding and capacity. There are two counteracting effects: The volatility effect increases in importance at higher pressures and for…
Safety Relief Valves: Installation and Maintenance
Using proper installation practices and adhering to maintenance schedules helps ensure reliable operation of safety-relief valves Safety-relief valves are critical components of any pressurized system. In fact, a functioning safety-relief valve could be the most important piece of equipment on…
Water scarcity worsening
A few months ago, this column addressed the megadrought in the U.S. Southwest and the increasing concerns over water scarcity [ 1]. Since that time, the drought in that region of the U.S. has continued, further impacting communities across the…
Engineering soybean plants to increase crop yield
For the first time, researchers have proven that multigene bioengineering of photosynthesis increases the yield of the major food crop soybean in field trials. An international collaborative team of the RIPE project (Realizing Increased Photosynthetic Efficiency), led by the University…
Chementator Briefs [October 2022]
E-Cracking Last month, construction began on the world’s first demonstration plant for large-scale, electrically heated steam cracker furnaces. The demonstration plant will be fully integrated into one of the existing steam crackers at BASF’s Verbund site in Ludwigshafen, Germany. It…
Univation and W.R. Grace technologies selected by Red Sea National Petrochemical Co.
The Red Sea National Petrochemical Co. has selected process technologies from W.R. Grace (Columbia, Md.) and Univation Technologies, LLC (Houston) for a major petrochemicals complex in Egypt. Univation's UNIPOL PE Process has been selected for two reactor lines. The two…
Fluor awarded contract for procurement and construction of a large biologics plant in Scandinavia
Fluor Corp. (Irving, Tex.) announced that the company has been selected by a leading biologics company to perform procurement and construction management for a large-scale biologics drug substance manufacturing facility located in Scandinavia. Fluor will book the multi-hundred-million-dollar reimbursable contract…
Solvay to increase PPA resin capacity at Augusta, Georgia site
Solvay S.A. (Brussels, Belgium) announced that it is increasing its Amodel polyphthalamide (PPA) resin capacity by 15% at its Augusta manufacturing site in Georgia as a result of operational excellence initiatives. The new capacity facilitates the production of innovative and more sustainable Amodel PPA…
Solenis to acquire paper process chemicals business of KLK Kolb Group
Solenis (Wilmington, Del.) and Kolb Distribution Ltd., a unit of KLK Kolb Group, have announced that Solenis has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire the latter’s paper process chemicals business. The deal includes a long-term supply agreement, in which…