New hardware combined with monitoring technologies can help optimize combustion now and in the carbon-conscious future Combustion has long been a delicate balancing act. Chemical processors want their combustion systems to be fuel efficient and available for use, while at…
An interdisciplinary team of biologists, chemists and engineers from the University of Portsmouth (U.K.; www.port.ac.uk) have become the first to successfully grow a limpet-inspired biomaterial with extreme strength. The common limpet (Patella vulgata) is a small, snail-like mollusk with a…
Conventional gas-separation membranes normally exhibit a trade-off between selectivity and permeability — a practical limitation referred to as the Robeson upper bound. As a result, membranes designed to selectively remove relatively low concentrations of carbon dioxide from natural gas or…
Ethernet Advanced Physical Layer (APL) provides connectivity between field-generated data and enterprise systems. Presented here is information on the design and operation of this rapidly expanding technology Process plants today have vast amounts of data available at the field level…
Henry Kister shares lessons learned from troubleshooting distillation towers In 1988, the author led a team to troubleshoot a chemical tower that was revamped to achieve a small increase in capacity (up to 4%) by increasing the tray hole areas…
Compliance with industry- and machinery-specific safety standards and classifications is essential to make the safest possible environment for plant personnel, especially those working in potentially hazardous conditions Navigating the world of industrial safety standards can feel like being in uncharted…
Advances in sliding-vane and internal-gear seal-less pump technologies can provide many benefits when compared to centrifugal pumps or more well-known positive-displacement pump options Facilities in the chemical process industries (CPI) use a wide array of flowing substances that must be…
Transparent polymer film started with an accident . . . and spurred a packaging revolution One night in Paris, in 1900, Swiss chemist Jacques Brandenberger was enjoying dinner in a restaurant when he noticed that a fellow patron had spilled…
Achema (www.achema.de), the global forum for the chemical engineering and process industries presented by Dechema e.V. (www.dechema.de), is taking place August 22–26 in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. This year’s event will feature over 2,000 exhibitors and a comprehensive technical program.…
Understanding the working principles of scrolling and pushing centrifuges can help when deciding which type to use. Feed properties and other factors also play a role When looking for a proven solution for mechanical dewatering, you will most likely come…