In today’s fast track schedules for constructing new capital facilities, the process of designing, delivering and erecting piping often falls in the project’s critical path. This is particularly true for facilities constructed in emerging economies, where the facility generally resides…
Frequently, in chemical processing equipment it is possible to place the shaft support bearings in the chemical that is being processed. In some cases, this precludes the use of oil- or grease-lubricated bearings because the operating conditions are not conducive…
Portable mixers for pilot plant and small-scale production processing The PB Series pharmaceutical mixers (photo) feature a lightweight frame motor with a right-angle drive, 316 stainless-steel wetted parts, dry running mechanical shaft seal with CIP (clean in place) capabilities and…
Plant Watch Construction of AkzoNobel’s unit for ethylene amines in China progresses December 17, 2008 — AkzoNobel Functional Chemicals (Amersfoort, The Netherlands) is installing production capacity for ethylene amines in Ningbo, China, including ethylene oxide and monoethanolamine (MEA). Startup of…
Laminar Pipe Flow For steady flow in a pipe (whether laminar or turbulent), a momentum balance on the fluid gives the shear stress at any distance from the pipe centerline. In Equation (1), Φ = P + ρ gz. The…
In a fired thermal fluid heater, a thermal fluid is heated by the metal surfaces of a fired heater or fluegas heat-recovery exchanger. Generally, the heat input rate is controlled to achieve some desired bulk-fluid temperature exiting the heater. However,…
Organic-based thermal fluids provide relatively trouble-free service for significant periods of time. However, there comes a time when any fluid (either aromatic- or aliphatic-based) needs to be replaced. Since aromatic-based fluids generally cost more and are complicated to dispose of,…
Lubricant contamination in gearbox bearing housings can substantially reduce gear life. In critical applications, dual-face, magnetic bearing-protector seals will keep contamination out (Figure 1). Dual-face, magnetic bearing protectors are preferred in many difficult applications, such as wet cooling tower gearboxes,…
Engineers often need to fit experimental data to an empirical relationship for extrapolation or modeling without resorting to a full mathematical treatment based on physical principles or theory. The most widely used platform in science for doing this is MS…
The thermal conductivity of hydrocarbons is an essential parameter that needs to be known when designing heat transfer equipment. Presented here is a simple-to-use correlation that was developed for predicting thermal conductivities of liquid paraffin hydrocarbons, petroleum fractions and atmospheric…