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Pressure Relief Requirement During External Pool-Fire Contingency

Relief system design is an important engineering activity throughout the chemical process industries (CPI). The main purpose of this task is to design a system that protects process equipment and piping against all possible causes of overpressure. It should relieve…

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Smooth Your Retrieval of Plant-Design Data

Most chemical engineers involved with operating large chemical process facilities have encountered the following challenge: Several large engineering contractors built the facility in multiple phases, using different computer-software models. Retrieving drawings or data in both digital and non-digital form in…

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Millichannel Reactors: A Practical Middle Ground for Production

The desire to move from batch to continuous processes for the production of high-value organic molecules has become more widespread in recent years as evidenced by the increasing number of related studies published in the literature. The benefits of continuous…

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Maximizing Heat-Transfer Fluid Longevity

Faced with increased workloads and time and budget constraints that often restrict external training support, many chemical process operators are forced to get the most out of their heat transfer system with less help. This article offers recommendations for how…

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Creating Installed Gain Graphs for Control Valves

Installed gain graphs can help improve the selection of control valves for chemical processing. The graphs are plotted to analyze together control-valve flow characteristics and process-system flow characteristics, and better illustrate the relationship between a control valve and the system.…

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A Primer on Spray Drying

An understanding of the basic information presented here will help you produce powdered products with desired characteristics, while operating the drying plant safely and with minimum energy   This photo shows a spray dryer with a heat recuperator. The plant…

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De-emphasize Capital Costs For Pipe Size Selection

Piping represents a major cost for projects in the chemical process industries (CPI). Larger pipe diameters increase upfront capital costs for a project, but the lower pressure drops afforded by large pipes mean less power is required to move the…

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Making the Leap from R&D to Manufacturing

The success of industrial R&D activities has a direct impact on a company’s long-term commercial profitability. Today, a variety of market forces, including the drive for growth, the search for new ideas and innovative products, and the increasingly competitive pressures…

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Direct-Fired Heaters: Evaluate Thermal Performance And the Effects of Fouling

Direct-fired heaters find wide application throughout the chemical process industries (CPI) and are common in petroleum refineries, where they are used to preheat petroleum or petroleum-derived feedstocks in advance of downstream process operations. Since excessive internal tube fouling occurs above…

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Aboveground and Underground Storage Tanks

The ultimate objective of storing liquid, fluid and gaseous products, which may be corrosive, flammable or unstable, is to store material in an environmentally safe and economically viable manner. Storage tanks in the chemical process industries (CPI) can be most…