The AchemAsia exhibition and conferences (www.achemasia.de) are a pretty good guide to trends in the chemical process industries (CPI) in China. Held every three years, you can measure changes simply by studying what is on show, and what delegates have…
I was at the local Panera Bread. I almost screamed. I would have, except there was a sign on the front door that said “Positively No Screaming.” I was sitting within earshot of a junior-high-school science teacher whom I did…
During my youth, as a mass- and heat-transfer R&D manager, there were 12 occasions when new technologies were sold for the very first time. One or two of those technologies might have been considered “breakthroughs.” The others were very significant…
There is an emerging crisis brewing for the chemical processing industries (CPI) in many regions of the world. Those regions include China, the world’s manufacturing powerhouse; swaths of the U.S., including large parts of its South; and chunks of Europe.…
Seeking input on distillation education Right now, distillation engineers are extremely busy — globally, and especially in the U.S. The AIChE Distillation Symposium (May, San Antonio, Tex.) that was organized by Henry Kister and Mike Pritchett had an amazing number…
Have you ever participated in a team-building exercise, the type where Human Resources personnel teach a group of individuals how to work better together? I’ll bet that during my career I participated in about ten such exercises, but right now…
Lessons learned Your Editor’s Page in today’s Chemical Engineering [March 2013, p.5] intrigued me because I too served as a TA in a physical chemistry lab but long before 1980 and we did not have the luxury of a Fourier-transform…
Some injuries are permanent; some injuries are total. People who work for, or near, small companies need to be protected just as much as those associated with large companies. Small companies, however, usually cannot afford to employ full-time, certified, degreed,…
Respiratory Protection* ... OSHA requires employers to institute engineering and work practice controls as the primary means to reduce and maintain employee exposures to air contaminants to levels at or below the OSHA permissible exposure limits (PELs). Primary reliance on…
In his keynote presentation at this year’s ARC Forum (February 11–14, Orlando, Fla.; www.arcweb.com), Andy Chatha, president and founder of ARC, stated that there were over ten billion WiFi-connected devices in 2012 and that over 50 billion are expected by…