Automation & Control
Editor’s Page: Surviving the Surge
Exactly three years ago, in the July 2005 issue, this page began with a reference to a perfect storm, whereby then-record-high oil prices of $60/bbl and a relief in capital costs were expected to get the chemical process industries (CPI)…
Go With the Flow
According to experts in flow measurement, any chemical processors seeking to optimize its processes in an effort to offset the rising prices of natural gas, electricity and raw materials may want to look at improving measurement and control…
Cover Story Part 1: Level Measurement Technologies For the CPI
Plant performance and safety are key issues for the chemical process industries (CPI) and level measurement plays a crucial role in both. Level measurement helps maintain material inventory at economic quantities, improves product quality and ensures a smooth continuous…
Solids Processing: Automating Your Weigh Batching System
In many plants that batch-blend bulk products, weigh batching is a manual, time-consuming operation in which ingredients are weighed individually before being discharged to a blender or some other process vessel. A significant number of such plants could benefit from…
Chementator: MIR spectrometer on a chip
Infrared (IR) analyzers are widely used for gas, liquid and surface analysis. Up to now, the most common and inexpensive IR sensor has been a combination of filters (non-dispersive IR) — which have a restricted wavelength band — with a…
Engineering Practice: Hydrogen-Pinch Analysis Made Easy
An automated spreadsheet method can quickly help minimize fresh hydrogen consumption while maximizing hydrogen recovery and reuse in petroleum refineries and petrochemical complexes In petroleum refineries and petrochemical complexes, there are many hydrogen consumers, such as hydrotreaters, hydrocrackers, isomerization units…
Warming Up to Accurate Temperature Measurement
Accurate temperature measurement is not difficult. It does, however, require you to think about accuracy from specification and selection, all the way up to installation and operation of your temperature-measurement sensor. There are opportunities to improve accuracy during each of…
Focus On: Analyzers
High-resolution x-ray diffraction Based on the Medipix2 application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC), the PIXcel is designed for sensitive, high-resolution x-ray diffraction applications. Consisting of over 65,000 pixels, each 55 x 55 microns in size and with individual readout circuitry, it delivers…
Chementator: First WirelessHART products set to launch
Emerson Process Management (St. Louis, Mo.; edlinks.chemengonline.com/7371-545) claims to be the first process-automation supplier to start taking orders for WirelessHART-enabled products, based on the recently approved open standard for in-plant wireless communications. These measurement and communications products include pressure, flow,…
Column Instrumentation Basics
An understanding of instrumentation is valuable in evaluating and troubleshooting column performance Instrumentation is critical to understanding and troubleshooting all processes. Very few engineers specialize in this field, and many learn about instrumentation through experience, myth and rumor. A good…