A couple of years ago on Chemical Engineering’s 120th anniversary, I looked back at the history of this publication and at that time, I wrote: “In September of 1902, the first issue of Electrochemical Industry was published to serve those…
A pilot project evaluating the Electro-Ceramic Desalination (ECD) technology developed by Membrion Inc. (Seattle, Wash.; www.membrion.com) successfully recovered clean water from the reject water of a reverse osmosis (RO) desalination process at a commercial manufacturing site. Membrion’s technology uses ceramic…
Conceptual capital-cost estimates are important for assessing the economic viability of proposed projects, but their usefulness depends on understanding how to appropriately apply the estimates Capital cost estimates are a crucial step in order to make prudent decisions regarding any…
Conventional combustors that employ air-blast and pressure-swirl injection technologies are very sensitive to fuel properties, especially viscosity, limiting their ability to utilize certain classes of fuels and blends, including bio-based fuels. The new swirl-burst (SB) fuel-injector technology developed at Baylor…
This packaging film is water soluble EcoSol® is a PVOH (polyvinyl alcohol) film (photo) that dissolves in water in minutes. It can be made into bags, pouches and sachets of many different sizes to create an efficient delivery system for…
Steam is commonly used across the chemical process industries (CPI) for a variety of end uses, including process heating, mechanical drive, moderation of chemical reactions and fractionation of hydrocarbons. Heat exchangers, turbines, fractionating towers, stripping columns, and reaction vessels are…
Sustainable SMR In the pursuit of lowering greenhouse gas emissions, hydrogen has gained much attention as a potentially “clean” energy source. Typically, hydrogen is produced by steam methane reforming (SMR), a process which itself produces greenhouse gases. Efforts to lower…
Henry Kister shares lessons learned from troubleshooting distillation towers This conversation started in a course I was presenting in Sydney, Australia. I was about 15 minutes into my presentation when a delegate from a major petroleum refinery stopped me. “How…
A new demonstration plant is upcycling gypsum (calcium sulfate) — a material that is typically challenging to dispose of — at a metal-refining site using a process that combines salt-splitting electrolysis, caustic direct-air capture (DAC) and mineralization. Travertine Technologies, Inc.…
Air Liquide (Paris, France; www.airliquide.com) recently announced a renewable hydrogen production project at TotalEnergies (Courbevoie, France; www.totalenergies.com) La Mède (Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region in France) site. In the context of a long-term contract, Air Liquide will cover the hydrogen needs of…