Automation & Control
Cover Story Part 2: Liquid-Level Measurement Options In the CPI
Many types of industrial processes utilize liquid level sensors to provide the information needed to monitor and control a process. This enables the design parameters to be maintained in order to produce the end product at the desired level of…
Focus On: Gas Detection
A Low Parts Count Makes this CO 2 Monitor Economical Boasting an in-house design and accurate CO 2 detection between 0 – 10,000 ppm, the ZG106A-M has a uniquely low parts count, making it an economically competitive option for determining…
Chementator: Speech technology for the CPI
BASF IT Services (Ludwigshafen, Germany; edlinks.chemengonline.com/7374-533) has developed a voice-activated IT system that can be used by those involved in hazard-containment. The application was pilot tested together with BASF SE’s fire department, as part of the four-year EU project called…
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,…
Sensing Change in Batch Reactors
The batch reactor is the workhorse of the fine chemical and pharmaceutical industries. Within it, many different unit operations are performed such as chemical reactions, bioreactions, crystallization, distillation and dissolution. Despite their significance to the industry, batch reactors have been…