Environment, Health, Safety & Security
Welcome new attention to Global Warming
In families, organizations or nations, it can happen that when leaders at the top do not lead, those supposedly led take things into their own hands. That seems like an adequate, if imprecise, summary of how the largely regional, state-level…
Preventing Fires and Explosions in Pilot Plants
Among pilot plants, those in petrochemical or petroleum-refining service pose special risks of fire and/or explosion. The key strategies to minimize those risks are these: properly conducted preconstruction safety reviews; leaktight design and construction; close attention to area…
Chementator: Plant security
BroadWare Technologies, Inc. (Santa Clara, Calif.; edlinks.chemengonline.com/5829-548) and Intergraph Corp. (Huntsville, Ala.; edlinks.chemengonline.com/5829-549) have created an integrated solution that feeds high-quality video from remote locations to a central command center to speed decisionmaking and response time when a security event…
Technology Showcase: Trends in Fluid Catalytic Cracking
Advances in catalytic cracking technologies are improving efficiency, product selectivity and environmental emissions. Optimum performance, reliability and flexibility of fluid catalytic cracking (FCC) units is essential for the continued competitiveness of refineries and their ability to meet market…
Combustion guidelines
Last month, the Commission on Air Pollution Prevention of the VDI and DIN Standards Committee (Düsseldorf, Germany; edlinks.chemengonline.com/5828-544) published a new guideline (VDI 2442), which provides specific information on the design, construction and operation of waste-gas cleaning plants using thermal…
How to Handle Hydrogen In Process Plants
Hydrogen is widely employed for hydrogenation and other purposes in chemicals manufacture, petroleum refining and other chemical process industries (Hydrogen: The Real Action Is Today, CE, February, pp. 28ff), and it holds promise as a fuel. However, this…
Understanding Atmospheric Storage Tanks
Liquids are accumulated and stored in tanks of various shapes and sizes throughout the chemical process industries (CPI). A small number of companies have made the design, fabrication and erection of these vessels their specialty. Initially, however, it…
Consider Alternate Fuels To Cut Costs
Fuel costs rose sharply in 2005 because of hurricane damage to U.S. interests in the Gulf of Mexico, and international developments in the oil supply market. Competing fuels — coal and natural gas — rose in price in…
Chementator: Selective flotation
The presence of arsenic minerals, such as enargite and tennantite, in some copper-bearing ore bodies, can be a problem for those wishing to recover the copper. When delivering copper concentrates to smelters in Australia, for example, miners are subjected to…
Green chemistry — there’s a lot still left to do
Last August, the comments on this page saluted recent achievements of BASF Corp., Merck, Archer Daniels Midland and other winners of the U.S.’s 2005 Presidential Green Chemistry Challenge Program, administered by the Environmental Protection Agency (Green-chemistry feats bring in the…