A Spanish refinery makes the best of its challenging location with state of the art wireless monitoring — A refinery never stands still: Hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil, fuel and petrochemicals are pumped back and forth each day. With stakes that high, valve monitoring becomes a crucial challenge. But what if the situation calls for a wireless solution? Discover, how process monitoring takes to the airwaves …

Technip FMC has recently completed all the required conditions for carrying out expansion and modernisation of Midor’s refinery in Egypt. On completion, the modernised complex is expected to produce Euro V products.

Crude oil, coal, natural gas and biomass — discussions about the future mix of raw materials in the chemical industry has only just begun. PROCESS has compiled the key findings for you.

Laboratory analysis using graduated sieves is a tried and tested way to determine particle size distribution in the management of grinding operations. But although it is accurate, sieving is time-consuming. A new inline particle size measurement system brings the accuracy of sieve analysis to real-time measurement.

At its plant in Waco, Texas/USA, Allergan packs single-use eye drop vials in cartons of various sizes, and also in sealed plastic trays. Previously these two packaging types needed two separate equipment lines, but for the last few months the company has been using a GMP-compliant packaging line which can do both.

Located in Alabama, the plant is Arkema’s maiden facility in the USA. The move is in line with the firm’s ambitious growth strategy for developing high-performance polymers and advanced materials.

Chemical production in Leverkusen has one foot in the future. The F³ project was launched to ensure that the European chemical industry remains competitive in the world market. PROCESS took a look behind the scenes.

Exact and reliable chemical analysis of feedstocks and products is very important in the manufacture of fine chemicals. Laboratory gas chromatographs are among the techniques traditionally used for this task, but pressure to improve process operations has brought change. Online process gas chromatography now provides significant benefits, as shown on a naphtha cracker.

Since 2003 when Bayer Technology Services has set up an independent legal entity evolving from the Bayer Group, the company was growing fast in the China market. Seven years later, on the occasion of this year’s AchemAsia, PROCESS spoke with Dr. Martin Franke, the new Managing Director of Bayer Technology and Engineering (Shanghai) — BTES in short — about the latest strategy.

FDT (Field Device Tool) is an established standard for device integration in both process as well as factory automation. For process automation the unification of FDT and EDDL (Electronic Device Description Language) to FDI (Field Device Integration) is under development. This article explains the concepts of FDT and FDI and presents a bridging solution.