Chemical Engineering
How AI-Powered Visual Inspection is Reframing Industrial Hygiene
From PPE compliance to spill detection and dust accumulation, smart inspection and monitoring systems are giving real-time visibility into industrial hygiene hazards that manual inspections routinely miss Many use cases for industrial artificial intelligence (AI) have been documented in recent…
Facts At Your Fingertips: Key Considerations for Control-Valve Specification
Control valves ensure safe and efficient operation of process plants by regulating the fluid flow in connected pipes. This one-page reference outlines key considerations for specifying control valves during the design phase of a plant. Valve sizing. The size of…
Downcomer Backup Flooding: In Search of the Truth
Correctly identifying flood mechanisms that limit throughput in a distillation column is central to maximizing capacity and debottlenecking. Guidelines for diagnosing the mechanism are described in Ref. 1. This column recounts a case of downcomer backup flooding. Backup from frothy…
Biomanufacturing at Scale: Separating Feasibility from Commercial Viability
Physical scalability in fermentation was established decades ago. The decisions that determine whether a bioprocess for making a specialty chemical becomes a profitable one are made earlier, and they focus on deployment execution and commercial position of the product Ask…
Rio Tinto opens $1.4-billion lithium projects in Argentina
Rio Tinto plc (London, U.K.) announced a major milestone for Argentina’s lithium industry, marking the official opening of Rio Tinto’s Fénix 1B expansion and Sal de Vida operation in Catamarca following a combined investment of around $1.4 billion. Both projects…
MilliporeSigma opens bioprocessing production center in Daejeon, South Korea
MilliporeSigma (Burlington, Mass.), the U.S. and Canada Life Science business of Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany, today announced the opening of a new Asia-Pacific Bioprocessing Production Center in Daejeon, South Korea. The center represents an investment of more than €300 million,…
AkzoNobel completes $60-million upgrade of three North American powder coatings sites
Upgrades to production, infrastructure and technology have been made at three of AkzoNobel N.V.'s (Amsterdam) Powder Coatings sites in North America as part of a $60 million investment. The company's facilities in Reading, Pennsylvania; Warsaw, Indiana; and Monterrey, Mexico, have…
PTT Global Chemical, SCG Chemicals plan olefins, polyolefins JV in Thailand
PTT Global Chemical Public Co. Ltd. (GC; Bangkok, Thailand) and SCG Chemicals Public Co. Ltd. (SCGC; Bangkok, Thailand) have announced plans to combine their olefins and polyolefins businesses in Thailand to strengthen the Thai petrochemical industry's competitiveness on the global…
Fujifilm to boost magnetic tape production capacity fivefold
Fujifilm Corp. (Tokyo) has decided to invest approximately 10 billion yen at its Kanagawa Factory, Odawara Site to increase its production capacity for data storage magnetic tape by approximately five times. The investment will strengthen Fujifilm’s stable supply system for…
Thyssenkrupp Uhde awarded FEED for CF Industries’ proposed urea liquor upgrade plant in Ontario
thyssenkrupp Uhde GmbH (Dortmund, Germany) has been awarded a front-end engineering design (FEED) study by an affiliate of CF Industries Holdings, Inc. (Northbrook, Ill.), one of the world's leading manufacturers of hydrogen and nitrogen products, for a proposed new urea…