Technical & Practical
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…
Don’t Fall For Common Misconceptions
Myths and misconceptions become part of accepted practice if repeated often enough. They are propagated by lack of fundamental particle-technology knowledge and by certain commercial interests. The list of presented here is by no means exhaustive. We have,…
Making Sense of Your Project Cost Estimate
If your estimate for a project's capital cost is too high or too low, incomplete or wrong, a poorly developed scope is the mostly likely cause. In almost all cases, project cost estimating is more accurate than the…
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…
The Maturation of a Technology: Predictive Emissions Monitoring
Air pollution is monitored by many different regulatory programs, some of which require that emissions be measured continuously. This task is often accomplished by directly measuring air pollutants with continuous emissions monitoring systems (CEMS). In recent years, innovative…
Putting Fiber-Optical Spectroscopy to Work
The beauty of fiber-optical spectroscopy is that small, inexpensive devices with no moving parts bring their capacity to where the samples are, rather than the other way round. As a result, spectra can be recorded in almost real…
Solid Tips for Project Success
Processes incorporating bulk solids handling are ubiquitous in the chemical process industries (CPI), including the chemical, petrochemical, polymer, biochemical, agricultural chemicals, paints/pigments, energy and power, pulp and paper, and pharmaceutical industries, to name a few. Studies conducted during…
Materials of Construction for Low-Temperature and Cryogenic Processes
Trends in the worldwide chemical process industries, especially a steep rise in the compression and liquefaction of gases to lower the costs of their storage and transportation, have heightened the engineer's need to have a working familiarity with…
Flow Measurement in Bitter Cold
The usage of Coriolis flowmeters for measuring mass flowrates has become widespread in the chemical process industries, and the range of fluids with which these meters can be employed is likewise diverse. Among those applications, Coriolis flowmeters can readily be…