To stay on budget, major capital projects often call for aggressive schedules. Engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contractors often end up using work processes that are not part of an established or standard work procedure. This is especially true when…
In today’s climate of increased energy prices and tightening environmental emissions requirements, petrochemicals producers around the world are continuing to focus on optimizing energy consumption at their facilities. Over the past few years, while energy prices have been increasing, petroleum…
The benefits of field-device diagnostics are often acclaimed in qualitative terms, but on a much lower frequency in quantitative ones. Yet, an attractive cost-benefit analysis is necessary for almost any initiative to make it off the drawing board and into…
Pinch analysis is a systematic method to maximize energy recovery from process streams entering and exiting process equipment. Using this method, the minimum thermodynamic requirements for hot and cold utilities can be calculated for a process. This is useful to…
Equilibrium stage simulations are the nearly universal process design tool for mass transfer columns that contact vapor and liquid in countercurrent flow. Whether the service is absorption, stripping, distillation, fractionation, quench or evaporation, equilibrium stage models make mass and heat…
There are various reasons that make filtering necessary in processes. The raw materials might have impurities that require removal at the start of the process. After the initial mixing to produce the process slurry, the mother liquor could have…
One of the key components in the operational success of chemical process industries (CPI) facilities is the transfer pump. These pumps must handle a wide variety of materials under a broad range of operating conditions. These diverse operational conditions may…
To confidently design, operate and troubleshoot solids-handling processes, engineers need to characterize powder flow in ways that relate to in-plant behavior. Universal powder testers provide the multi-faceted characterization that is necessary to reliably predict operational performance. This article examines the…
A well-operated steam generator can save money. In a steam-driven turbine system, water is heated in the steam generator to produce high-temperature, high-pressure steam. Steam is then expanded in a turbine to produce electricity from a generator. Turbine steam is…
I was having a “wallflower moment” after Ms. Ruth Sands’ excellent troubleshooting presentation at the March AIChE meeting. That presentation was well summarized by Editor in Chief, Rebekkah Marshall in the April issue of CE (p. 5). I wanted to…