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…
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…
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…
Sorbent materials are used commercially for bulk separation, as well as purification of both liquids and gases. This one-page reference provides manufacturing and application information on the most widely used industrial sorbent material — activated carbon. Four types of generic…
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…
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…
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…
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…
In the face of intense market pressures, companies are increasingly requiring their engineering organizations to complete capital projects more quickly, while spending less capital and creating systems that cost less to operate over the long run. They are also asked…
Dust in the chemical processing industries (CPI) is present in numerous operations, including powder processing; the transport of materials on belt or rotary-screw conveyors; grinding materials in giant shredders and pulverizers; machining, sawing, grinding or sanding operations; dumping bags of…