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Uniting on interoperability

It's a simple matter of fact: a chemical process plant operates by the products and services of numerous - and, unavoidably, competing - vendors. Since the resulting compatibility issues only hamper productivity, vendors, EPC firms and owner/operators alike tried to…

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Target Costing

    Free trade agreements, global manufacturing standards and the Internet have made it possible for companies to do business in countries they would not have considered 20 years ago. Open is a world of opportunity, but for processors of…

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Modeling Granular Flow Using Discrete Element Method – From Theory to Practice  

    Modeling the behavior of bulk solids has been a longstanding challenge for researchers and practitioners alike. The differences between fluids, rigid solids and bulk solids can best be illustrated by their responses to applied stress. For instance, when…

Advances in process modeling

Aspen Technology, Inc. (Cambridge, Mass., edlinks.chemengonline.com/6893-544) announced a milestone accomplishment as a result of combining the company's thermophysical and thermochemical property data sets with those maintained by the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST; Gaithersburg, Md.; edlinks.chemengonline.com/6893-545). Through…

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Cellulosic ethanol

  Last month, Diversa Corp. (San Diego, Calif.; edlinks.chemengonline.com/6893-546) and Celunol Corp. (Cambridge, Mass.; edlinks.chemengonline.com/6893-547) signed a definitive merger agreement to create what is claimed as a new leader in the emerging cellulose-based ethanol industry. The combined company will be…

Plant-design market

P&ID's are often generated using Autodesk, Inc.'s (San Rafael, Calif.; edlinks.chemengonline.com/6893-548) AutoCAD software platform and user generated drawing blocks. To better facilitate this wide use, Autodesk launched AutoCAD P&ID 2007 software at daratechPLANT 2007, hinting at a forthcoming suite of…

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GTL/CTL cooperation

  Last month, China Petroleum & Chemical Corp. (Sinopec; Beijing; edlinks.chemengonline.com/6893-549) and Syntroleum Corp. (Tulsa, Okla.; edlinks.chemengonline.com/6893-550) signed a memorandum of understanding for a joint technology-development effort tor advanced natural gas-to-liqquids (GTL) and coal-to-liquids (CTL) technologies. Syntroleum will provide its…

Trapping CO2

For developing a new technology that traps carbon dioxide and other pollutants so they can be removed, researchers from the University of Bath's Dept. of Chemical Engineering (edlinks.chemengonline.com/6893-551) have received the £185,000 Brian Mercer Award for Innovation from the Royal…

Temporary seal

TubeMaster, Inc. (Louisville, Ky.; edlinks.chemengonline.com/6893-552) has filed patent applications for a new seal technology used in tubes that have both catalyst and thermocouples. Called ThermoCoupleMaster, the new seal is especially suitable for multi-tubular reactors in petrochemical plants. The device makes…

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Reducing PFOA

DuPont (Wilmington, Del.; edlinks.chemengonline.com/6893-553) has commercialized a patented process that removes more than 97% of trace levels of PFOA (perfluorooctanoic acid), its homologues and direct precursors meeting the voluntary U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA; Washington, D.C.) 2010/15 PFOA Stewardship program…