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Environment, Health, Safety & Security

A very confined space

Circa 1978, Reese and I visited a petrochemical plant in Corpus Christi, Texas. Primarily, our job was to inspect trays that had been installed in three columns. Each of those columns was about 10 ft in diameter and 100 ft…

Convert wastewater and CO2 into chemicals with this technology

Electrochemical and chemical-precipitation technology from New Sky Energy (Boulder, Colo.; www.newskyenergy.com) allows the conversion of salty wastewater and CO2 from fluegas into valuable process chemicals, such as soda ash, calcium carbonate, sulfuric acid, bleach and other chemicals. New Sky’s customizable…

Explosions: Are You Prepared?

An explosion is defined as “a rapid increase in volume and release of energy in an extreme manner,” and is usually accompanied by high temperature generation and gas release. Flammable gases, vapors, dusts and ambient oxygen — all present in…

Newsbriefs for June 2012

U.S. House approves cybersecurity bill to ease information sharing Last month, the U.S. House of Representatives voted to pass the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA), a measure that would ease information sharing among chemical firms and other companies…

Chlorine dioxide single-stage NOx scrubbing technology lowers costs

A new process for removing oxides of nitrogen (NOx) from industrial foul-air and cool combustion exhaust uses ClO2 in a unique way to remove over 99% of both NO and NO2 with a single scrubbing stage. The reaction vessel is…

CSB deploys team to investigate fatal hot-work explosion

The U.S. Chemical Safety Board (CSB; www.csb.gov) has deployed a four-person investigation team to El Dorado, Ark. to determine the cause of an explosion and fire that severely burned and killed three workers. The accident occurred Monday, May 21, 2012,…

Adsorption and Absorption

Adsorption and absorption play a big role in reducing air pollution in many applications around the world. Studies show that the largest single use of absorbers this year will be to capture SO2 from power-plant flue gas. Adsorbers will be…

Is your control system vulnerable to an attack?

Control and automation in the chemical process industries (CPI) have evolved by leaps and bounds over the past century, bringing along a host of benefits. As a result, today’s state-of-the-art facilities are more in line with business objectives, less prone…

Growing algae with fluegas CO2

Construction of a 1-hectare (ha) carbon-capture and recycling “synthesizer” demonstration plant has started at Tarong Power Station near the town of Nanango in southeast Queensland, Australia. Tarong Power Station comprises four coal-fired units with a gross generating capacity of 1,400…

A video camera that detects fires and fire risks

This company has added long-range fire detection and fire risk-assessment capabilities to certain models of its EyeSec line of high-performance, uncooled thermal cameras. With this integrated option, the company claims to be the only camera manufacturer that delivers an application-specific,…