Because of the behavior of materials under vacuum, including lowered boiling points, low-pressure operations are useful tools in chemical processing, as well as in research and development and manufacturing. Areas where a vacuum system is necessary or useful include the…
Particulate buildup and other material flow problems are common hurdles wherever dry materials find application in the chemical process industries (CPI). Since manual intervention is costly in terms of downtime, and can be quite hazardous for the personnel involved, dedicated…
Pipe sizing calculations include certain values that are time dependent, such as costs. While some costs rise, others decrease over time. It is the designers task to ensure that the total cost is minimized. For fluid flow calculations, heuristic criteria…
The chemical process industries (CPI) invest large amounts of capital each year and spend even more to produce the goods they sell. In 2007, CPI companies large enough to be in the Fortune 500 list invested more than $100 billion…
Typical wastewater-treatment plants (WWTP) — both industrial and municipal — consume large amounts of energy, which can represent 50% or more of the facility’s variable operating and maintenance costs. Most employ biological processes that rely on energy-intensive aeration systems whose…
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…
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…
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.…
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…
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…