Large petroleum-refining complexes often have dozens of fired heaters, making broad-based competency in this area essential to overall reliability, safety and energy efficiency. Despite industry’s widespread familiarity with fired heaters, they continue to pose significant challenges during initial control-system design…
Lithium is an element of growing importance for the production of batteries and nuclear fuels. Because Japan relies completely on imports of this material, with the majority coming from South America, the country is looking for alternative sources for this…
Big-time security threats and breaches, like the recent Target data breach involving confidential consumer information, remind us of how vulnerable our interconnectivity makes us. And yet, the advantages of the technological advances that we enjoy are so many that there…
Separation of micron-sized oil droplets from water is difficult by conventional methods. A Chinese team has developed an oleophilic array of conical needle structures that can continuously collect micron-sized oil droplets from an oil-water mixture with high efficiency and high…
"As long as fossil fuels and carbon-intensive industries play dominant roles in our economies, carbon capture and storage (CCS) will remain a critical greenhouse gas reduction solution. With coal and other fossil fuels remaining dominant in the fuel mix, there…
When flammable or combustible atmospheres are present, uncontrolled discharges of static electricity are potentially dangerous or even catastrophic. A significant portion of industrial explosions and fires are attributable to static electricity each year. In theory, controlling static electricity by grounding…
As an owner or manager of a company whose product is regulated by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), you will, at some point, be subjected to an FDA inspection. And once an inspection is underway in your facility,…
The chemical process industries (CPI) are, by their very nature, global in scope. While chemical process operators share many common aspects (in terms of the use of chemical engineering unit operations), the location of their operation brings about different requirements…
About thirty years ago, my golf foursome learned an important safety lesson and we credited the Dalai Lama. We were all big fans of the movie “Caddyshack.” In that movie, Bill Murray’s character talks about caddying in the Himalayans for…
Polymers like polyethylene, polypropylene, polyvinyl chloride and polyester have become ubiquitous in manufacturing. The properties of polymer-based materials that make them so desirable — they are generally cheap to produce and boast high chemical and thermal stability — also make…