Follow these recommendations to select the right centrifuge for your application Many chemical process operations require the separation of multiple phases. This can be done in a number of ways, including simple gravity separation, traditional or crossflow membrane filtration and…
Last month, the U.S. Congress passed the Frank Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act. This bill, called “historic” by many, brings very significant changes to the 40-year-old Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA). This much-needed modernization of TSCA is…
At the April 2016 Seattle meeting of the ASME B31.3 Process Piping Code Committee, a presentation — a cautionary note in a manner of speaking — was given by Barry Messer of Fluor Corp. (www.fluor.com). The topic was the unexpectedly…
Ongoing advances in both adsorbent materials and system engineering allow today’s pressure swing adsorption (PSA) systems to produce nitrogen of varying purities and volumes at relatively low cost compared to cryogenic air separation Nitrogen production that is carried out using…
Cybersecurity is critical for plant safety. Principles developed for plant safety can be applied to the security of IT systems When the Stuxnet computer worm attacked programmable logic controllers (PLCs) at Iranian nuclear facilities running an integrated system, centrifuges were…
Security techniques widely used in information technology (IT) require special considerations to be useful in operational settings. Here are several that should get closer attention Industrial cybersecurity risks are widely appreciated. In April, the deputy director of the U.S. National…
This column is based on “LLDPE Production via Gas-Phase Process — Cost Analysis,” a report from Intratec. It can be found at: www.intratec.us/analysis/lldpe-production-cost. Linear low-density polyethylene (LLDPE) is a copolymer of ethylene and longer-chain alpha-olefins, manufactured on commercial scale via…
Combustion in industrial burners is a critical operation in the chemical process industries (CPI) for supplying thermal energy for heat transfer, fluid heating, steam generation, distillation, endothermic chemical reactions, metal melting and others. Burners are mechanical devices utilized for mixing…
Plant Watch Unipetrol breaks ground on Czech Republic’s largest petrochemical project June 10, 2016 — Unipetrol a.s. (Prague, Czech Republic; www.unipetrol.cz) has officially broken ground for the construction of a new polyethylene unit, said to be the largest investment in…
Machine secures complex loads to ensure safe transport The Multi FleXL stretch hood machine is designed to secure and maintain the integrity of tall and wide pallet loads throughout the supply chain. With larger loads, proper load containment can be…