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Technical & Practical

The Mass Balance

    More and more, it is recognized that business and science are interwoven, and that these disciplines can complement each other to achieve corporate goals. In the chemical process industries (CPI), a noteworthy role is that of engineering in…

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Antoine Coefficients for Vapor Pressure of the Elements

        Vapor pressure is important to engineers throughout the chemical process industries (CPI). Knowledge of a compound's vapor pressure is required in the design of storage vessels containing the compound. In hazard analysis, knowledge of vapor pressure…

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Specifying CPVC In Chemical Process Environments  

    Since its introduction to the market in 1959, chlorinated polyvinyl chloride (better known as CPVC) has proven suitable for use in a wide variety of chemical process environments. Because it is inert to most mineral acids, bases, salts…

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Get the Most Out of Waste Heat

    The process industries are extensive users of energy. But it is now clearly established that a large amount of this energy is wasted, essentially in the form of heat rejected to the environment through gaseous or liquid effluents.…

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Wastewater: A Reliable Water Resource  

    Water is an essential resource for the chemical process industries (CPI), with steam, cooling water and process water as just a few examples of its many applications. When readily available, this essential commodity is often taken for granted.…

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Heuristics Rules for Process Equipment

    Provided that they are updated when appropriate to keep them relevant, time-tested heuristics rules based upon experience, also referred to as rules of thumb, can be useful for the design, specifying and operation of several kinds of equipment…

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Getting the Most Out of Intelligent Devices

    Since their inception, data buses have been highly acclaimed in the chemical process industries (CPI) for their potential to achieve interoperability and substantial wire-savings - advantages that are particularly easy to envision for a theoretical case in which…

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Implementing Communication Buses

    The reason for installing a bus is generally four-fold: to reduce costs; to speed and simplify control system design, installation, and startup; to provide alarming and troubleshooting diagnostics; and to gather valuable information about the process itself.  …

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Optimization of Complex Distillation Columns

    Distillation, based on differences in the volatility of components, is the most common unit operation for separating homogeneous mixtures. In simple distillation columns, a single feed stream is separated into two product streams. Complex columns are those that…

Measurement Best Practices for Safety Instrumented Systems

    The ANSI/ISA-S84.01-1996 standard, which has guided North American users for the past decade in designing safety instrumented systems (SIS) has migrated to a new international standard based on the IEC 61511 and is now known as ANSI/ISA-84.00.01-2004 (IEC…