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Draining Vessels

Throughout the chemical process industries (CPI), the need to drain a tank or process vessel arises. In batch-type plants, it is a regular occurrence and is one factor that affects the total cycle time per batch and ultimately the entire…

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Municipal solid waste is one feedstock for this bioethanol process

The technology surrounding a hydrolysis- and fermentation-based process that is capable of utilizing municipal solid waste (MSW) and biomass waste to produce cellulosic bioethanol at low cost is now available for licensing from its developer, TMO Renewables Ltd. (Guildford, U.K.;…

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Centrifugal Compressors for CPI Plants

The growth in use of centrifugal compressors in chemical process industries (CPI) applications in recent decades has been brought about by four factors: 1) advances in dry gas seal technology; 2) modern aerodynamic, rotor-dynamic and thermodynamic knowledge and techniques; 3)…

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New polysilicon granule-drying system boosts processing yields and purity

A novel cold-dry process makes possible the utilization of fine form-factor silicon, such as granules and sand-like fines, in the production of high-purity polysilicon for solar photovoltaic cells and semiconductors, where such fine-grained material would normally have to be sent…

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Tubing for peristaltic dosing pumps

Peristaltic pumps work by compressing a tube against a circular pump housing with rollers on a rotating arm. The fluid that is ahead of the roller gets pushed forward, while new fluid is drawn into the tube by the vacuum…

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Lignin recovery process could improve profits for papermakers

Recovery boilers, in which pulp and paper companies burn spent black liquor from the kraft pulping process to recover and recycle sodium and sulfur, are a bottleneck in many paper mills. The reason is that they operate at their upper…

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A new catalyst enables room-temperature interconversion of CO2 and formic acid

A new catalyst that converts H2 and CO2 into formic acid under mild conditions has been developed by researchers at the Solar Light Energy Conversion Group of Energy Technology Research Institute, National Institute for Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST;…

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Base-catalyzed nucleophyllic additions with a modified zeolite

A new solid-state basic catalyst for forming carbon-carbon bonds has been developed by Masaru Ogura, an associate professor, and his research group at the Institute of Industrial Science, University of Tokyo (www.u-tokyo.ac.jp). The catalyst has been shown to accelerate the…

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Scaleup for a new delignification process

This month, Borregaard Industries Ltd. (Sarpsborg, Norway; www.borregaard.com) will start up an integrated, pilot-demonstration plant to further develop a new pretreatment process for converting biomass into lignin and fermentable sugars. Located at the company’s R&D Center in Sarpsborg, the pilot…

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A method for quantifying pipe vibrations

Failures of piping due to vibration-induced fatigue are a serious problem in the chemical process industries (CPI) and a matter of concern for the safety and reliability of plant operations. Due to the complexity of flow-induced vibrations in pipes, no…