With a thorough investigation and proper problem diagnosis, an entire gas plant limited by a deethanizer reboiler circuit was successfully debottlenecked This article describes a case study of a gas plant (designed by others) that was bottlenecked by the reboil…
Desalination Recently, Formosa Petrochemical Corp. (FPCC; Mailiao, Taiwan; www.fpcc.com.tw) commissioned IDE Technologies (Kadima, Israel; www.ide-tech.com) to build a desalination plant in Yunlin County, Taiwan that will be the first large-scale application for IDE’s high-purity boron-removal process. The three-step process combines…
To provide corrosion protection and long life, steel products are galvanized by immersion into kettles containing molten zinc. These galvanizing kettles need to be checked periodically to monitor rates of corrosion in order to avoid a catastrophic spillage of molten…
Chiyoda Corp. (Yokohama, www.chiyoda-corp.com) has been working on a new naphtha cracking process with the aim of producing more propylene and consuming less energy than existing naphtha thermal-cracking methods. The company has recently developed a new catalyst based on iron-…
Last month, the Precious Metals Chemistry business unit of Umicore AG & Co. KG (Hanau-Wolfgang, Germany; www.pmc.umicore.com) inaugurated its production unit for making trimethylgallium (TMGa) and triethylgallium (TEGa). The new facility uses a new, patented production process to make these…
The Sabatier reaction, in which H2 and CO2 react at temperatures of 300–400°C in the presence of a nickel catalyst, or an alumina-supported ruthenium catalyst, is one way to reduce CO2 into methane. Until now, however, it has been difficult…
Nippon Shokubai Co. (Osaka and Tokyo, Japan; www.shokubai.co.jp) has jointly developed a new process for biomass utilization in collaboration with professor Yuichi Kita at Kobe University (www.kobe-u.ac.jp). The process is highly efficient for decomposing lignocellulose into a group of water-soluble…
Produced water from natural gas wells in the Marcellus Shale Deposit is extremely high in total dissolved solids (TDS; levels of 25–35% TDS are common) and barium, making the water difficult to re-use and requiring injection in underground geologic formations.…
Natural gas vehicles (NGVs) are attractive because of the low cost and wide availability of natural gas, plus the ability to connect to residential and business gas lines for fueling. Among the challenges for using natural gas as a fuel…
Data points from literature are refined into a single correlation defining dry-tray pressure drop in sieve trays The sieve tray has been in the marketplace as a distillation device for many decades. It has been used extensively on distillation tray…