Cool Videos For Chemical Engineers

Since I spend much of my blogging time focused on administering our community, I thought it might be fun to throw some interesting videos out on to the blog for all to enjoy. Some of you may already be familiar with pinch valves and spiral heat exchangers, but I thought that since they're not widely used, some may find them interesting.

The pinch valve is a type of valve often used in slurry services such as those found in municipal waste (very exciting) and other types of duties that are traditionally difficult to handle with other types of valves. Essentially the valve uses rubber sleeve that is mechanically pinched to turn off the flow:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjPlztCRfyA&hd=1

Sticking with the slurry theme, the spiral heat exchanger is designed especially for highly fouling and/or slurry duties. The key to this type of heat exchanger is that it utilizes a single channel design for each fluid that actually increases the fluid velocity if a deposit begins to form. The result is a "self-cleaning" action (shown in the second video). This type of heat exchanger is commonly employed in a variety of duties. If you have a shell and tube heat exchanger that must be cleaned frequently, these are typical target applications for this type of heat exchanger.

Spiral Exchanger Flow Path

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yrKdfhydxs

Spiral Exchanger Self Cleaning

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kl-hb3XBMFs&hd=1

And now, not sticking with the theme at all, below is just a fun video showing a burst test for a PVC pipe. At least it's entertaining to watch the PVC "creep" prior to catastrophic failure (don't worry, no one was hurt).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JK4Cxgi4UH0