Process Engineering articles from May 2005

Process Engineering archives from May 2005

Bayer looks to the future.
May 31, 2005... Bayer, in its first year without its Lanxess bulk chemicals operation, saw sales and earnings climbing strongly in the first three months of 2005, according to chairman Werner Wenning, speaking at the company's annual stockholders meeting....

DSM expansion.
May 31, 2005... Aker Kvaerner has won a contract for the first phase of engineering for a project to expand DSM Engineering Plastics' diaminobutane (DAB) plant in Geleen, the Netherlands. Including reliability studies, the project phase is scheduled for...

Coal-to-liquids boost.
May 31, 2005... Foster Wheeler is to participate in a feasibility study for two 80,000 bpd coal-to-liquids (CTL) facilities, to be located in the coalfields of Western China. The company will be joined in the study by a joint- venture partner, China Huanqiu...

RECIPE for energy savings.
May 31, 2005... Thousands of European plastics producers are to be invited to take part in a costs benchmarking survey as part of a new programme for saving energy and cutting costs in plastics processing. Called RECIPE (Reduced Energy Consumption in...

Fast driving, using ABB's drives.
May 31, 2005... Many companies pride themselves on mastering fast-moving applications, but speed has taken on a new dimension for ABB. The company has supplied motors and drives to a project attempting to break the world land speed record for an...

IN BRIEF: THORP pipework failure.
May 31, 2005... The front end of the THORP nuclear fuel reprocessing plant has been shut down while a pipework failure in the plant's feed clarification cell is investigated. The cell is a stainless steel secure environment, designed to handle such failures....

IN BRIEF: Vantage point.
May 31, 2005... US EPC contractor Chicago Bridge & Iron (CB&I) has signed a licence agreement to use the Vantage project resource management system, developed by Aveva. A key factor in the deal was Aveva's agreement to supply on-going systems enhancements...

IN BRIEF: Stan's the man.
May 31, 2005... Stan Higgins has been appointed chief executive of the North East Process Industry Cluster (NEPIC), formed from the merger of the Teesside Chemicals Initiative and the Pharmaceutical and Specialty Cluster. He aims to make the area's industries...

Costs a concern for Hambrecht.
May 31, 2005... Raw materials costs are the main barrier to BASF's smooth progress in 2005, says chairman Jorgen Hambrecht. Reporting an 11% increase in first-quarter sales to E10billion, with high capacity utilisation contributing to 'significant'...

Modular award.
May 31, 2005... Novo Nordisk's newest pharmaceuticals manufacturing facility has been named the first winner of the Facility of the Year award, given by the ISPE, the Interphex conference and the US magazine Pharmaceutical Processing. The plant, in...

South Hook control contract.
May 31, 2005... Yokogawa has won a #4million lump sum turnkey contract to provide instrumentation and controls for the South Hook liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal, to be built near Milford Haven in Wales. Set to be the largest LNG terminal in Europe, South...

Queen's Award for Newson Gale.
May 31, 2005... Safety equipment specialist Newson Gale is among the winners of this year's Queen's Awards for Enterprise, for increasing the overseas sales of its Cenelectrex static grounding equipment by 70% in three years. The Cenelectrex range...

IN BRIEF: Amplicon buy-out.
May 31, 2005... Computing and data acquisition specialist Amplicon Liveline has been sold to its management team. The company's founder, Jim Hicks, is to retire, and the company is now wholly owned by managing director Tony Gorbold, finance director Mark...

IN BRIEF: Water merger.
May 31, 2005... Cornish water quality monitoring companies Partech Instruments and EauxSys have announced their merger, with the company trading under the Partech name. 'EauxSys has tended to concentrate on the development of specialist products,' comments...

IN BRIEF: Ethernet to grow.
May 31, 2005... The worldwide market for industrial ethernet devices is set to grow at a rate of 51.4% over the next five years, according to a report from the ARC Advisory Group. The market will be worth $939million by 2009. 'Ethernet technology is rapidly...

Whales force gas rerouting.
May 31, 2005... Sakhalin Energy, the Shell-led consortium developing oil and gas reserves near Sakhalin Island off the east coast of Russia, is to move three of its offshore pipelines to avoid feeding grounds for the endangered western grey whale. The...

Winfrith decommissioning contract.
May 31, 2005... UKAEA has awarded a #6million contract to decommission the Steam Generating Heavy Water Reactor (SGHWR) at Winfrith, near Dorchester, to RWE Nukem. The project, which commenced late last month, is scheduled to last 18 months. RWE has...

Scrub success.
May 31, 2005... BASF has started up its first plant in Thailand to remove carbon dioxide from natural gas using an activated methyldiethanolamine (aMDEA) process in Thailand. Located north of Bangkok in Map Ta Phud, the plant is owned and operated by the PTT...

Technology Today: Clean hydrogen.
May 31, 2005... Cleaning up wastewater and generating electricity at the same time - it might seem too good to be true, but Bruce Logan, professor of environmental engineering at Penn State University, believes that microbial fuel cells (MFC) might make it...

Technology Today: Indole synthesis route 'will cut costs'.
May 31, 2005... A new reaction to form the carbon skeleton of an indole molecule could reduce costs and help cut toxic by-products in pharmaceutical synthesis, as well as speeding up drug development, claim its developers at the University of Toronto....

Technology Today: No sparks, but a fire.
May 31, 2005... To start a fire, you need a source of ignition. Sparks from flint and steel, heat from rubbing sticks together, chemicals on a match-headGCa for the millennia that humans have been starting fires, there have been many methods, all involving...

Technology Today: Coating sensation.
May 31, 2005... A technique for coating conductive polymers onto miniaturised devices could lead to a new generation of toxic gas detectors, according to researchers from NIST. The team has found a way to deposit polyaniline, a highly promising conductive...

Technology Today: Water influence on ionics.
May 31, 2005... New research on ionic liquids - molten salts with applications as 'green' solvents - has revealed that they have an unusual property in the presence of water. According to Jason Widegren and co-workers at the US National Institute of...

Technology Today: Bubbling under.
May 31, 2005... Slurry bubble columns are extremely common in many processes, in sectors as diverse as hydrocarbon synthesis and water treatment. Cheap and easy to build, the reactors are filled with a suspension of solids, often including catalyst particles....

Environment: Market forces.
May 31, 2005... Stuart Nathan takes a look at how the European Union's Emissions Trading Scheme has developed since its launch, and how companies big and small can use it to their advantage The European Union's Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS) kicked...

Energy Management: Managing energy.
May 31, 2005... With rising energy prices, the advent of emissions trading and deregulation of utilities suppliers, process operators have to manage and optimise their energy use. Eric Petela explains how model-based software solutions can deliver significant...

Energy management in action.
May 31, 2005... Major energy users such as oil refineries and large chemical complexes are typical of the sites that can benefit from adopting a model-based approach to energy performance management. Valero Energy Corporation, for example, operates 14...

Environment: Cryogenics for cleaner air.
May 31, 2005... Luc Rijnbeek explains how cryogenic solvent recovery technologies can improve environmental performance - and how they may be vital for compliance with new regulations Recent technological developments in the use of cryogenic technology...

Environment: Sampling for CEMS.
May 31, 2005... As with any analytical system, continuous emissions monitoring systems (CEMS) are only as good as the quality of the sample presented to them. Robert E Sherman discusses the development of modular substrate sample conditioning systems and...

Environment: Make a date with MCERTS 2005.
May 31, 2005... Comprising a conference, workshops and exhibition, MCERTS 2005 takes place at the Bretby Conference Centre, Burton-upon-Trent, Staffordshire on 12-13 October. Jointly organised by the Environment Agency, the Source Testing Association and...

INTERKAMA: Networks set fair.
May 31, 2005... Like Achema, its chemical industry counterpart, the Hanover Fair is of a scale that dwarves any comparable trade event in the UK. Even concentrating on just Interkama - largely process control and instrumentation, as opposed to the general...

INTERKAMA: Trends in automation.
May 31, 2005... Asking a panel of industry experts for their ideas on the future for process automation over the next ten years might be taking crystal-ball gazing just a little too far, but Interkama's Forum event - a series of chaired discussions and...

PUMPS: New pumps from old.
May 31, 2005... What happens when your pump needs new components, but the manufacturer no longer supplies them? Oliver Bigginshaw explores the option of pump re-engineering as an alternative approach to complete pump replacement Many process plants have...

Equipment in Action: Crisp payback for centrifuges.
May 31, 2005... The potato crisp and snack manufacturer, Tayto (NI) is well known throughout Northern Ireland. Founded by Thomas Hutchinson in 1956, the family-owned company has its factory at Tandragee Castle (known as Tayto Castle to locals) in the middle of...

Equipment in Action: Keeping the noise down for mushroom growers.
May 31, 2005... At Heveco Mushrooms' farm in West Sussex, a crucial part of its intensive operation is sterilisation using steam at 5.5barg. 'We need continuity of production and efficient sterilisation is key to maintaining optimal performance,' says plant...

Equipment in Action: Gas detection for brewing.
May 31, 2005... Gas detection systems are an essential safety feature in today's breweries, protecting the workforce from the build-up of gases such as carbon dioxide. At InBev's Tennent Caledonian Breweries in Glasgow water ingress was causing problems...

Equipment in Action: Heavy-duty pH probe beets off competition.
May 31, 2005... At British Sugar's plant at Newark, Nottinghamshire, pH monitoring plays a vital role in the processing of extracting sugar from beet. The beet is sliced into strips and soaked in water to extract the sugar prior to converting it into a form...

Equipment in Action: Corrosion-resistant actuators for PTA plant.
May 31, 2005... At DuPont's PTA (purified terephthalic acid) plant at Wilton, Teesside, the aggressive nature of the process was causing problems on some valve actuators controlling the emergency shutdown procedures. PTA - a precursor for polyesters - is...

Equipment in Action: Long-life media for filter bags.
May 31, 2005... A Midlands company processing ingredients used in pork pies has overcome its dust emission problems by switching to a surface- filtration membrane from Ravensworth. The Ravlex MX embedded-membrane is a microporous fluoropolymer coating...

Product News: Heavy duty vacuum pump.
May 31, 2005... Based on its third generation double-ended screw technology, BOC Edwards' new IDX1000 high speed, high capacity, dry vacuum pump has been designed for harsh industrial applications such as metallurgy and roll coating. Designed as a 'dry'...

Product News: Validatable screening for pharma duties.
May 31, 2005... The new Compact Airlock Sieve, from separation and filtration specialist Russell Finex, is said to be the first real advance in pharmaceutical sieving technology for ten years. Designed in consultation with leading pharmaceutical companies, the...

Product News: Size analysis goes on the move.
May 31, 2005... At this month's Interphex exhibition in New York, Malvern Instruments is introducing a pharmaceutical industry-specific version of its Insitec Voyager mobile on-line particle size analyser. Offering a fully validatable package, the new pharma...

Product News: Certified fire and gas detectors.
May 31, 2005... Det-Tronics has released what it says are the world's first optical fire and gas detectors certified to SIL-2 (Safety Integrity Level 2) by the German certification agency, TUV. The SIL-2 certified X3301 multispectrum infrared flame detector...

Plant Cost Indices: UK and International Plant Cost Indices.
May 31, 2005... First appearing in Process Engineering in 1973, our long-running UK and International Plant Cost Indices provide important data for process design and project engineers. For the benefit of new readers, a brief explanation of the...