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Focus: Flowmeters
This flowmeter is designed for demanding applications Measuring volumetric flow accurately and reliably is difficult for applications where the process liquid is highly viscous, extremely abrasive, prone to plugging, at high temperature, or a combination of these conditions. In applications…
Business News [January 2025]
Plant Watch Chevron upgrades Pasadena refinery to increase capacity and flexibility December 11, 2024 — Chevron Corp. (Houston; www.chevron.com) has completed a retrofit of its petroleum refinery in Pasadena, Texas, which is expected to increase product flexibility and expand the…
Confined-channel membrane architecture allows simultaneous oil and water recovery
Surfactants can stabilize oil and water in an emulsion, a useful mechanism in many industrial processes and in cleaning up oil spills. But separating and recovering the oil and water, such as for eliminating waste discharge, can be difficult. A…
Improve Ethylene Production Margins with Digitalization
Digitalization can help ethylene producers to flexibly respond to economic uncertainties and assess available options based on their existing infrastructure and priorities Post-pandemic, olefin and polyolefin producers have been faced with regional and global economic headwinds. Inflation, energy security, rising…
New electrode design improves electrochemical CO2-to-ethylene conversion
Electrochemically converting carbon dioxide into useful chemicals or fuels is a promising CO2-utilization strategy, but scaling up the process is a challenge. One reason is that the gas-diffusion electrodes (GDEs) used to facilitate contact between gaseous CO2, solid catalyst and…
Facts at your Fingertips: Accelerating Materials Development with AI
Advanced materials are considered to be core enablers for technologies aimed at broad global concerns, such as climate change, sustainable manufacturing, critical-materials supply chains, environmental mitigation and remediation and others [1]. The process by which novel advanced materials are designed…
Weighing in on Accuracy: Recent Developments in Weighing Equipment
Innovation, intelligence and automation increase precision in weighing equipment for chemical processors Accurate weighing and dosing are critical to the success of any chemical process, because they ensure product quality, safety and resource optimization. Fortunately, innovative technologies, intelligence and automation…
Chementator Briefs
Powerful permanent magnets Permanent magnets — materials that create their own persistent magnetic field — are frequently used in most types of electronics, turbines, engines and motors. Currently, nearly all powerful permanent magnets require rare-earth elements (REEs), such as neodymium…
Electrically powered heat pumps and vacuum pumps simplify CO2-capture retrofits
Meeting climate-change goals requires steep reductions in greenhouse-gas emissions from existing power plants and hard-to-abate industry operations. However, the energy required to release captured CO2 from sorbent material is a challenge for the economic viability of these efforts. Also, retrofitting…
Entrainment Flooding and Weeping Velocities
Weeping and flooding phenomena set the vapor velocity in industrial distillation columns. Presented here are procedures for calculating flooding and weeping velocities in a four-pass sieve-tray column In industrial distillation, the term “weeping” is primarily used when the liquid in…