Plant Watch Messer to construct $70-million air-separation unit in Arkansas January 15, 2025 — Messer Group GmbH (Bad Soden, Germany; www.messergroup.com) has announced a strategic investment of over $70 million to construct a state-of-the-art air separation unit (ASU) in Berryville,…
Developing sustainable pathways to ethylene — among the world’s most widely used chemicals — is a key element in decarbonizing the process industries. A new electrolysis technology developed by CERT Systems (Toronto, Ont., Canada; www.co2cert.com) can produce ethylene from CO2…
Nearly all ammonia is produced using methane via the Haber-Bosch process, which requires high-temperature and high-pressure operation. A new portable prototype device developed by researchers from Stanford University (Stanford, Calif.; www.stanford.edu) and King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals (Dhahran,…
In December 2024, the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL; Richland, Wash.; www.pnnl.gov) announced a three-year collaborative project with vehicle-tire manufacturer Bridgestone (Tokyo, Japan; www.bridgestone.com) to scale up a thermocatalytic process for converting renewably derived ethanol to n-butene. Conventionally, n-butene is…
As processes have become more complex and dynamic, alarm management software has evolved, and now provides deep intelligence to keep plant personnel safer, more aware and more efficient There can be little doubt that effective alarms are one of the…
One of the aspects of my job that I really enjoy is keeping in touch with new and advanced technologies emerging from the chemical process industries (CPI) — an interest that traces back to my roots as an R&D engineer.…
Desalination of seawater with reverse osmosis (RO) membranes is a key technology for addressing water scarcity issues around the globe, but seawater desalination is energy-intensive and the brine discharge can create coastal environmental problems. The company Flocean AS (Oslo, Norway;…
The wide range of performance properties of polyurethane foams makes them essential in many consumer goods. Thus, there is much effort going into creating a more environmentally friendly production process for polyurethane’s main building blocks, polyols and isocyanates. While much…
Construction is imminent for a carbon-capture project aimed at reducing CO2 emissions from steel production while producing carbon-neutral calcium carbonate. At the U.S. Steel (Pittsburgh, Pa.; www.ussteel.com) manufacturing facility in Gary, Ind., a carbon-capture system designed by CarbonFree (San Antonio,…
Gas compressibility can lead to choked flow in piping systems. Presented here is an overview of choked-flow geometries in pipes, and examples of how choked flow arises in different pipe layouts The more things change, the more they stay the…