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Extracting 1,3-Butadiene from a C4 Stream

The organic compound 1,3-butadiene is a petrochemical commodity used as a raw material for the production of rubbers and plastics, such as polybutadiene rubber (PR), styrene butadiene rubber (SBR), and acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS). These materials are mainly applied in…

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New Horizons For Dividing Wall Columns

A dividing wall column (DWC) is an atypical distillation column with an internal, vertical partition wall that effectively accommodates — within one shell — two conventional distillation columns that are connected in series as required when separating a multicomponent feed…

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Distillation Column Thermal Optimization: Employing Simulation Software

Several market conditions, including availability of light crude oilds in the U.S., low natural-gas prices and improving macroeconomics, are driving debottlenecking projects related to columns in both petroleum refining and chemical settings. Fortunately, the process-simulation tools that can be used…

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Cooling Towers: Managing Tighter Water-Discharge Regulations

Historically, many large industrial facilities, including power plants, have relied on once-through cooling, in which the entire cooling water volume flows through the plant heat exchangers and then is discharged to the original source. However, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency…

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Dry Separation Methods

The chemical process industries (CPI) have many applications that require classifying or separating solid materials. Examples of separation or classification processes include those operations that attempt to isolate specific material fractions according to particle size, scalp off the coarse fraction…

A Safety Checklist For Laboratories

Laboratories, such as those used for quality control in a production environment and those in research and development, are an integral part of the chemical process industries (CPI). Everyday demands of business can easily overtake safety when it comes to…

Liquefied-Industrial-Gas Safety

Many industrial gases are transported, stored and used in liquid form, a situation that poses significant health and safety risks. This one-page reference highlights good safety practices for preventing personnel injury when working with cryogenic fluids. High-purity industrial gases, including…

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July Letters: Ethanol from the direct gasification of biomass

May Technology Profile I would like to ask the following questions and offer the following comments regarding the May 2014 Technology Profile (Ethanol from the Direct Gasification of Biomass, p. 43). • What is the overall yield of ethanol (in…

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Control Valve Selection: True Cost Savings Are Available

New safety and environmental regulations, longer plant uptime and changes in maintenance practices have created new requirements across the chemical process industries (CPI). Among the plant equipment affected by these changes are control valves, since they are used in numerous…

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Producing Ethanol from Lignocellulosic Biomass

Pressing global issues, such as climate change and declining energy security, have led to an increasing interest in the use of renewable feedstocks for fuel production. These feedstocks include lignocellulosic materials, such as waste biomass from the agriculture and forest…