Articles Archives

Basics of Phase Equilibria

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Chemistry of Photography

While it is easy to make comparisons between the pupil of the eye and the f-stop of a camera or between the retina of the eye and photographic film, once we get past the basic similarities of the optics of the two systems, comparisons begin to rapidly...

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A Lesson Learned from Plants

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Pinch Technology: Basics for Beginners

While oil prices continue to climb, energy conservation remains the prime concern for many process industries. The challenge every process engineer is faced with is to seek answers to questions related to their process energy patterns. A few of the fre...

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Measure Discharge Flow from a Horizontal Pipe

Ever been confronted with the exit of a horizontal pipe full of flow?  Wouldn't it be nice if there was a simple method to determine the flow rate in the pipe?  Here's a method that may help. This works surprisingly well and is very easy to do. All m...

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What About Plastics?

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Plate Heat Exchangers: Preliminary Design

Numerous articles have been published regarding the advantages of compact heat exchangers. Briefly, their higher heat transfer coefficients, compact size, ease of service, cost effectiveness, and their unique ability to handle fouling fluids make compa...

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Pneumatic Conveying Design

One of the most popular methods of moving solids in the chemical industry is pneumatic conveying. Pneumatic conveying refers to the moving of solids suspended in or forced by a gas stream through horizontal and/or vertical pipes. Pneumatic conveying ca...

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Basics of Polystyrene Production

Polystyrene is a widely used polymer.  After production of the monomer, from one of a few processes, the monomer proceeds to further processing to form polystyrene. Styrene Monomer ProductionThe energy needed for the reaction is supplied by superheate...

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Factors Affecting the Quality of Quicklime

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Refinery Planning and Optimization

Modern optimization techniques have challenged organizations to rethink the way they conduct business both internally and externally, i.e. how efficiently and effectively their entire supply chain is managed. Supply Chain Management (SCM) is one such b...

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A Students Guide to Refining

Distillation is the first step in the processing of crude oil and it takes place in a tall steel tower called a fractionation column. The inside of the column is divided at intervals by horizontal trays. The column is kept very hot at the bottom (the c...

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Specifying A Liquid-Liquid Heat Exchanger

As an engineer, specifying heat exchangers for procurement is an important step in the successful execution of any heat transfer or energy conservation project. Early recognition that there are many different heat transfer technologies available can he...

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Energy Conservation in Distillation

The preferred method of separation in the chemical industry, distillation, is a very energy intensive process. Fine tuning your distillation columns (and in some cases, making major changes) can save your company thousands of dollars a year or more. Co...

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Sizing of Packed Towers in Acid Plants

Packed towers are key components in sulfuric acid plants. Drying of the sulfur furnace air is necessary to avoid acid condensation and corrosion in downstream equipment and to minimize mist formation. Absorption of SO3 in the Interpass and Final Towers...

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Trickling Biofilters for Hydrogen Sulfide Odor...

Controlling hydrogen sulfide and other odor emissions is a major issue for most wastewater treatment plants. H2S odors can by reduced to very low levels by wet scrubbers using caustic and chlorine or sodium hypochlorite. However, the chemical storage,...

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Biosorption

Biosorption is the binding and concentration of heavy metals from aqueous solutions (even very dilute ones) by certain types of inactive, dead, microbial biomass6. Pioneering research on biosorption of heavy metals has led to the identification of a nu...

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Distillation Pilot Plant Design, Operating Para...

In spite of the fact that tremendous progress is being made in understanding the performance of both random and structured packings in distillation, it is a long way from being able to predict from first principles, the efficiency, capacity and pressur...

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