Processing & Handling
Chemical Engineering Magazine Booklist: September 2017
The following information describes recently published books relevant to the chemical process industries (CPI): Engineering Energy Storage, By Odne Stokke Burheim, 2017, Academic Press, 252 pages, $125.00. Energetic Materials: Advanced Processing Technologies for Next-Generation Materials. Edited by Mark Mezger, Kay…
Winning iron and titanium while making vanadium electrolyte
VanadiumCorp Resource Inc. (Vancouver, B.C., Canada; www.vanadiumcorp.com) has achieved direct and consistent recovery of vanadium electrolyte, vanadium oxides and titanium from vanadiferous titanomagnetite (VTM; vanadium-rich Fe3–xTixO4) using hydroelectricity, from the company’s Lac Dore Vanadium Project in Quebec. The company has…
Oxy-fuel burner restores air-fuel regenerative furnaces to full production
Engineers at Air Products (Lehigh Valley, Pa.; www.airproducts.com) have commercialized an improved version of the company’s Cleanfire ThruPort oxy-fuel burner for avoiding downtime during repairs and extending the lifetime of air-fuel regenerative furnaces in glass-making plants. The company’s original Cleanfire…
Carbon nanotube technology toughens carbon-fiber composite materials
Under mechanical stress, carbon-reinforced epoxy-resin composite materials can experience cracking and de-lamination at the junctures between layers of material, where the composites are resin-rich. Placing vertically aligned carbon nanotubes (VACNTs) into the inter-laminar regions can toughen the composite and prevent…
Bioethanol from bagasse
Tsukishima Kikai Co. (www.tsk-g.co.jp) and JFE Engineering Corp. (both Tokyo, Japan; www.jfe-eng.co.jp) have demonstrated a process that produces bioethanol from bagasse, a waste product in the production of sugar from sugarcane. With support from NEDO under a four-year, $10-million project,…
A very efficient SOFC
Hitachi Zosen Corp. (HITZ, Osaka and Tokyo, Japan; www.hitachizosen.co.jp) has installed a solid-oxide fuel cell (SOFC) demonstration unit at Osaka Research Institute of Industrial Science and Technology, Izumi Center (Orist; Osaka, http://orist.jp), and has been performing tests since June. The…
Addressing Pumping Issues in Biopharmaceutical Operations
Quaternary diaphragm pumps deliver the low pulsation and shear that is critical to these biopharmaceutical and continuous-manufacturing operations Biopharmaceutical, pharmaceutical and nutraceutical manufacturing may come in a wide variety of forms, but every iteration of unit operation must adhere to…
Facts at your Fingertips: Batch versus Continuous Blending
Blending is a fundamental chemical unit operation, and there are a handful of common ways to implement it. Blending applications can be either manual or automated, and can be carried out either as a batch or continuous process. There are…
Technology Profile: Diammonium Phosphate Production
This column is based on “Diammonium Phosphate Production – Cost Analysis,” a report published by Intratec. It can be found at: www.intratec.us/analysis/diammonium-phosphate-production-cost. Diammonium phosphate (DAP) ranks among the most important phosphate-based fertilizers, not only for its high nutrient content, but…
A new zeolite catalyst promises to significantly improve naphtha cracking
Chiyoda Corp. (Yokohama, www.chiyoda-corp.com) has been working on a new naphtha cracking process with the aim of producing more propylene and consuming less energy than existing naphtha thermal-cracking methods. The company has recently developed a new catalyst based on iron-…