Technical & Practical
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.…
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…
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…
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. …
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…
Specifying Equipment for High-Purity Fluid Flow
In the pharmaceutical, biotech and food processing industries, ingredients are transported, mixed, heated and cooled assuming the assurance of product purity required by lawmakers and taken for granted by consumers. Integral to the design of fluid-handling systems that…
Prevent Plant Upsets
For many years, the job of a control room operator at a petroleum refinery or chemical plant was seen as relatively simple: Keep the process running and fix it when it breaks. That perception is changing as more…
Bring Common Sense to Pump Troubleshooting
In widespread use throughout chemical process plants, centrifugal pumps are often employed (and taken for granted) in severe service conditions. Consequently, it is hardly surprising that problems can arise during their operation. A major difficulty facing the chemical…
Stream Selection Assemblies For Analytical Instrumentation
Intelligent selection and specification help to assure getting representative, uncontaminated samples from multiple process lines to a shared analyzer Process engineers rely heavily on analytical instrumentation to ensure product quality. Properly designed systems help prevent contaminated fluids and gases from…