At the opening ceremony of Achema, German Federal Minister for Economic Affairs and Climate Action, Dr. Robert Habeck, along with other leaders from the financial sector, the chemical industry and suppliers offered insights about how the process industry is positioning itself within new global framework conditions and wrapped up the session by suggesting that international cooperation is the need of the hour in order to overcome the many challenges faced by the process industry.

PROCESS Worldwide brings to you the ‘Top 10 plant engineering projects of June 2024’ from all over the world. Right from Cepsa beginning construction of Spain’s first isopropyl alcohol plant to H2Site developing an ammonia cracker to produce fuel cell-grade hydrogen, find out all the projects making headlines here.

Air Liquide has plans to develop a new industrial gas production facility in Idaho, USA. The unit is expected to produce large volumes of ultra-pure nitrogen and other gases for Micron Technology as well as for other customers in the region.

The same developments happening in the rest of the world are also reshaping laboratories: the increasing use of technology, digital tools and, of course, robots and artificial intelligence (AI). All these trends often go hand in hand with a greater awareness of environmental issues. In this trend report, we present a summary of the fruits these developments are already bearing and will bear in the future.

What do the trend topics of circular economy, battery production and plant proteins have in common? They challenge the creativity of process engineers, and they follow the global megatrends of resource scarcity, mobility, nutrition and climate protection. Where the focus in the past decade was on new chemical processes and digital technologies, now it is the turn of mechanical process engineering.

The pharma packaging industry is increasingly adopting robotic lines to enhance packaging efficiency and maintain consistency in order to remain competitive in the market. The industry is also looking to become sustainable by exploring the use of eco-friendly packaging materials in its machines.

With chemical and chemical processing industries aiming to forge ahead in their automation and digitalization drive to develop their respective ‘Factory of the future’ or ‘Smart factory’, one thing is certain – it can’t be done without the use of robots at least for the time being. The concept of robots is not new but they have been transformed time and again to meet the challenges of today’s industrial plants especially with regard to plant inspection as well as maintenance and it won’t be wrong to term this phase as the ‘return and rise of robots.’

The digital twin technology replicates the physical assets of production processes or performance of a production system into a virtual system. With the adoption of this technology, industry players will be able to make use of real-time data to make informed decisions about the lifecycle of plants, processes as well as production, leading to optimized industrial operations across the chemical and petrochemical industries.

Cyberattacks are a disaster for every company in the process industry. But you can protect yourself. Our guest article looks at the security measures you should take.

Whether it’s for density, sound velocity or refractive index, Anton Paar provides all three methodologies on a single platform for the inline concentration measurement of liquids. This article reviews the foundational principles that underpin each of these critical measurement methods.