It's no secret that the chemical process industries (CPI) are being significantly impacted by the recent increases in energy costs. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, the CPI's percentage of total operating costs that are attributable to…
ConocoPhillips LP (CP; Houston, Tex.; edlinks.chemengonline.com/6896-539) and Tyson Foods, Inc. (Springdale, Ark.) have formed an alliance to use beef, pork and poultry by-product fat to create renewable-diesel (RD) fuel that burns cleaner than conventional diesel. The production technology uses a…
A coal-gasification reactor that resembles a metals smelter and operates in two cycles (oxidation and reduction), alternately producing hydrogen and syngas, is being developed by Diversified Energy Corp. (Gilbert, Ariz.; edlinks.chemengonline.com/6895-536) and Alchemix Corp. (Carefree, Ariz.). In the oxidation cycle…
In order to produce ethanol with nearly 100% purity from fermentation broth, conventional processes use a two-step distillation operation, which accounts for almost 55% of the total energy requirements. Therefore, improving the concentration step is a key to reducing the…
A paper-thin battery, with an electrode made from a redox-active organic polymer film (200 nm thick), has been designed by researchers at Waseda University (Tokyo; edlinks.chemengonline.com/6895-547). The polymer has nitroxide-radical groups that act as charge carriers. According to professor Hiroyuki…
Fired heaters are used considerably in the chemical process industries (CPI), for heating crude oil in the petroleum refining and petrochemical sectors. Unfortunately, fired heaters are often taken for granted and neglected more than other equipment in terms…
The cost of producing ethanol promises to be reduced by 50% through a process being developed by TNO (Zeist, Netherlands; edlinks.chemengonline.com/6894-536). The reason for the dramatic cut is that ligno-cellulosic material is hydrolyzed in a single step, using concentrated sulfuric…
Cleaning the interior of firetubes in oil-, biomass- or coal-fired boilers is a time-consuming task that can normally be done only when a boiler is offline. Now, a system that can do the job automatically while the boiler is in…
Another online boiler-cleaning system, in this case for coal-fired watertube boilers, is offered by GE Energy (Kansas City, Mo.; edlinks.chemengonline.com/6894-539). GE's automated system, called Powerwave+, is more efficient and less expensive than sootblowing with high-pressure steam, the commonly used online…
Demonstration plants to test six processes for producing ethanol from non-food-based biomass will be built with support from the U.S. DOE (edlinks.chemengonline.com/6894-543). Between them, the plants will produce more than 130 million gal/yr of ethanol from cellulosic feeds, including agricultural…