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Maximizing Heat-Transfer Fluid Longevity

Faced with increased workloads and time and budget constraints that often restrict external training support, many chemical process operators are forced to get the most out of their heat transfer system with less help. This article offers recommendations for how…

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Creating Installed Gain Graphs for Control Valves

Installed gain graphs can help improve the selection of control valves for chemical processing. The graphs are plotted to analyze together control-valve flow characteristics and process-system flow characteristics, and better illustrate the relationship between a control valve and the system.…

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Smooth Your Retrieval of Plant-Design Data

Most chemical engineers involved with operating large chemical process facilities have encountered the following challenge: Several large engineering contractors built the facility in multiple phases, using different computer-software models. Retrieving drawings or data in both digital and non-digital form in…

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Making the Leap from R&D to Manufacturing

The success of industrial R&D activities has a direct impact on a company’s long-term commercial profitability. Today, a variety of market forces, including the drive for growth, the search for new ideas and innovative products, and the increasingly competitive pressures…

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Direct-Fired Heaters: Evaluate Thermal Performance And the Effects of Fouling

Direct-fired heaters find wide application throughout the chemical process industries (CPI) and are common in petroleum refineries, where they are used to preheat petroleum or petroleum-derived feedstocks in advance of downstream process operations. Since excessive internal tube fouling occurs above…

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Aboveground and Underground Storage Tanks

The ultimate objective of storing liquid, fluid and gaseous products, which may be corrosive, flammable or unstable, is to store material in an environmentally safe and economically viable manner. Storage tanks in the chemical process industries (CPI) can be most…

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A Primer on Spray Drying

An understanding of the basic information presented here will help you produce powdered products with desired characteristics, while operating the drying plant safely and with minimum energy   This photo shows a spray dryer with a heat recuperator. The plant…

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De-emphasize Capital Costs For Pipe Size Selection

Piping represents a major cost for projects in the chemical process industries (CPI). Larger pipe diameters increase upfront capital costs for a project, but the lower pressure drops afforded by large pipes mean less power is required to move the…

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Chemical Resistance of Thermoplastics

Corrosion is estimated to account for a significant portion — 8–10% — of total annual-plant-capital expenditures for the chemical process industries. To avoid it, engineers can consider corrosion-resistant plastics for process piping and storage vessels. Thermoplastics are generally resistant to…

Preventing Dust Explosions

Household items, such as breakfast cereal, flour, corn starch and sugar are so common that many were left surprised after the 2008 combustible-dust explosion at a sugar refinery in Georgia. Heard in much of the early media coverage was the…