Plant Watch Solenis to build new polyvinylamine production facility in Virginia January 12, 2024 — Solenis, LLC (Wilmington, Del.; www.solenis.com) will invest $193 million to expand production capacity of polyvinylamine (PVAm) in Suffolk, Va. The company will build a new…
CO2 TO METHANOL Last December, Sumitomo Chemical Co, Ltd. (Tokyo, Japan; www.sumitomo-chem.co.jp) started operating a pilot facility for producing methanol from CO2 at its Ehime Works, located in Niihama City, Ehime Prefecture, Japan. The company aims to complete the demonstration…
Sort plastic flakes with this machine The new Innosort Flake (photo) is a high-throughput system for sorting plastic flakes. Enhanced features enable simultaneous flake sorting by polymer type, color and transparency, achieving unmatched quality, even from highly contaminated inputs, the…
A laboratory ventilation system that does not work effectively may not keep personnel safe and can produce significant adverse impacts on operations Laboratory personnel treat their ventilation systems as a given. They expect them to be designed right, to always…
A new electrochemical technology for direct-air capture (DAC) of atmospheric CO2 can also produce freshwater from brackish water or brine waste from desalination or wastewater treatment facilities (diagram). The technology, developed by Capture6 (Berkeley, Calif.; www.capture6.org), splits the salt content…
Understanding the water chemistry is a first step in preventing heat-exchanger fouling At the two power plants and chemical plant in which this author formerly worked, the fresh-water-makeup supplies (two lakes and an underground aquifer adjacent to a river) all…
The new SLPX Series of sloped-top motor disconnects (photo) enable plant operators to more easily prioritize sanitation while meeting requirements for multiple disconnects. Available in three multi-gang enclosure sizes, the stainless-steel SLPX Series features a unique clean design for critical…
This company’s Xcelerator portfolio of industrial software is being combined with Sony’s new spatial content-creation system, featuring the XR head-mounted display with high-quality 4K OLED microdisplays and controllers for intuitive interaction with three-dimensional objects (photo). Enabling designers and engineers to…
Small-scale distillation processes have specific concerns that are different than commercial-scale distillation. Presented here are several topics, including column internals and column-sizing software, considered from the perspective of pilot-scale distillation The design and operation of laboratory- and pilot-scale columns are…
Launched last December, the High Efficiency Scrubber (HES) Optimizer (photo) is a digital tool that combines internal process calculations with measurements available at site to enable energy savings in the operation of Venturi-type scrubbers in wet-gas cleaning plants. Although the…