Metcar mechanical seal rings and seal faces are manufactured using highly engineered carbon-graphite materials for demanding high-speed or high-load applications. The seal rings are ideal for sealing liquids, such as water, hot water, acids, alkalis, fuels, heat-transfer fluids, liquefied gases,…
Cellulosic biomass pretreated with ammonia undergoes structural changes that make it more susceptible to enzymatic attack, scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory (Los Alamos, N.M.; www.lanl.gov) and collaborators at the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center (Madison, Wisc.; www.glbrc.org) have found.…
This company’s Type 57IL Isolator Lug butterfly valve features a unique design in which the 316 stainless-steel lugs are inserted into the valve body during the injection-molding process. Doing so permanently combines the lugs and valve body into one unit.…
Anew process to make BTX (benzene, toluene and xylenes) from light cycle oil (LCO), an oversupplied product of petroleum refineries that can supplement the dwindling supply of BTX precursors, is being developed by JX Nippon Oil & Energy (JX Energy;…
The SFT-10 Liquid Carbon Dioxide pump features advanced thermoelectric technology that allows the generation of high pressure without the need for an external cooling bath. The SFT-10 can pressurize carbon dioxide up to 10,000 psi at flowrates from 0.01 to…
Phosgenation scaleup At the end of July, Bayer MaterialScience AG (BMS; Leverkusen, Germany; www.bayerbms.com) successfully tested its new gas-phase phosgenation technology at a new plant being commissioned for making toluene diisocyanate (TDI) — a raw material for making polyurethane —…
This article presents equations that allow the user to calculate liquid volume as a function of liquid depth, in both vertically and horizontally oriented tanks with dished heads. The equations accommodate all tank heads that can be described by two…
BASF (Ludwigshafen, Germany; www.basf.com) announced this week that its catalyst division will begin a new round of capital investment projects to increase production capacity for copper and copper-chrome catalysts. These investments are aimed at improving catalyst manufacturing efficiency to meet…
The Fine Chemicals Div. of Takasago International Corp. (Takasago; Tokyo, Japan; www.takasago.com) has commercialized a new, highly efficient asymmetric hydrogenation catalyst for producing chiral alcohols — key chemicals for the production of pharmaceuticals, fragrances and agrochemicals. The ruthenium-complex catalyst is…
The use of solar energy to split water into hydrogen and oxygen is an appealing idea, given that sunlight is abundant in many parts of the world, but one of the challenges to its development is to find a suitable…