My June 2011 editorial (CE, p. 27) recommended the hiring of happy people. It included a photograph of the present FRI technician staff. After a recent safety meeting, I handed all staff members fresh copies of their resumes. Once they…
Where do middle boilers go? If you answered, “Nobody knows”, then you’re wrong. FRI’s Design Practices Committee (DPC) knows — and they’re willing to share. The DPC was formed in 1975. It originally contained just six members. Neil Yeoman was…
Circa 1978, Reese and I visited a petrochemical plant in Corpus Christi, Texas. Primarily, our job was to inspect trays that had been installed in three columns. Each of those columns was about 10 ft in diameter and 100 ft…
Every five years or so, a call would come in and once again I would be troubleshooting a certain extraction unit in Canada — usually in the dead of winter. This particular unit had a liquid-liquid extractor, a stripper, a…
I will bet that many readers are familiar with a Teddy Roosevelt quote that includes the following: “It is not the critic who counts…the credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena...” Ralph Weiland has been in…
For the first half of my career, I worked in a group that developed, designed and sold distillation trays. Late during the 1970s, half of that group’s business disappeared — almost overnight — when structured packing replaced trays in very…
I was whining to myself, and to anybody who would listen, about the 20 to 30 projects that I have on my desk at all times. Then I met Ms. Regina Henry, who is the coordinator of immigration at Oklahoma…
The following letter originally appeared in Chemical Engineering, December 2011, p. 6. The U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) flawed and unwarranted ruling that styrene poses a health hazard continues to stir opposition from respected scientists, manufacturing leaders,…
(From November 2011, Letters) Perhaps enough has been written about the questionable science underlying recent U.S. government pronouncements concerning formaldehyde and human cancer of the lymphohematopoietic system (“LHPs—including the leukemias and the lymphomas)*. Now, suppliers of formaldehyde-containing product must face…
Thermosiphon reboilers are the new standard in petroleum refineries and chemical plants. Nevertheless, approximately 50% of the world’s reboilers are kettles. In the realm of heat transfer, kettle reboilers have not been understood well. Last month, at ChemInnovations, however, Pete…