Technical & Practical
Project design decision-making: Option lists
Most of the more than $100 billion in capital spending and $1.2 trillion in prodution costs spent annually by the chemical process industries (CPI) is committed by decisions made in the early phases of process development and plant design. A…
Viscosity Measurement
Measurement of fluids’ viscosity in the chemical process industries (CPI) can represent a useful “product dimension” for manufacturers. Understanding a material’s flow characteristics is valuable in predicting several parameters relevant to many CPI processes, including pumpability, pourability, performance in a…
Process Pump Control
When automating fluid handling processes, it is critical to ensure that you are using the best type of pump for the process, and to understand how to control the type of pump you are using. The two major classes of…
Predict and Prevent Air Entrainment in Draining Tanks
When tanks are draining, the potential may exist for a swirling vortex to form leading from the liquid surface to any of the bottom-exit or side-exit nozzles connected to downstream piping (Figure 1). One important aspect of the vortex is…
Hazards of column entry
In obtaining a degree or even a professional license in chemical engineering, there is little, if any, mention of facial hair. Nevertheless, that aspect of my appearance was surprisingly pivotal at one particular moment in my career. At that time,…
Steam Generation Thermodynamics
Although proper water treatment and conditioning for combined-cycle units and standalone steam generators are vitally important for reliability in the chemical process industries (CPI), a well maintained and operated steam generator can also save the facility much money with regard…
Connecting Process Simulators to the Control Room
One of the best ways to realize value from your process data is to use those data — both real-time and historical — in a process simulator. The many applications for doing so are generally categorized into offline and online…
MSMPR Crystallization equipment
Crystallization is a key purification technique for various sectors of the chemical process industries (CPI). Several approaches for industrial crystallization have evolved over time and highly specialized crystallizer designs have been developed, especially in long-established industries. Solution crystallization is an…
Zarko’s challenge
Every distillation engineer west of the River Neretva is familiar with the work of Professor Zarko Olujic. His distillation laboratory at the Technical University of Delft (The Netherlands; www.tudelft.nl) is one of the largest and best facilities in the history…
Improving Control Valve Performance
Improvements to the performance of basic, regulatory control systems have a great return on investment and are some of the least expensive control improvements to make [1]. Control valves have a major impact on control loop performance and, therefore, improvements…