Oil and petrochemicals boom in Asia: Especially China has seen a rapidly emerging petroleum products industry that is just about to venture into overseas market. Reason enough to address these developments with the International Forum on Petroleum & Chemical Engineering 2012, organized by PROCESS China. This year, the forum will be held in Shanghai for the first time...

Expectations from the Namur Annual General Meeting are understandably high - and once again, no one was disappointed. Many exciting and future-oriented lectures and discussions on subjects like Remote Operation, Industry 4.0, modularized automation and plant performance illustrated on the very first day the direction in which users and suppliers in process automation are being forced. The sector must overcome its limits in order to embrace new solutions...

A new plant concept is producing water for injection (WFI) and clean steam on a cost-effective and pharmocopoeia-compliant basis. Multi-column distillation and falling film evaporation are the preferred processes.

Many industrial users are aware that variable-speed pumps, which automatically react to variations in demand, save a substantial amount of energy. It is less well known that pumps with electronic control enhance hygiene and improve process efficiency in the food and pharma industry.

Finned pack heat exchangers — coils — find wide application in air handling units (AHU) and ventilation systems. Engineers often approach the rating of finned pack heat exchangers from one side only, whether that is the fluid side or the air side. As a result, a number of myths and suppositions endure in the industry, leading to errors and misunderstandings. This article deals with water heating and cooling coils, and focuses on the properties of the water or brine (glycol).

Emerson Process Management staged its annual user meeting in San Antonio. More than 2100 persons were on hand to keep up with the latest developments, be part of the networking community and play an active role in new product development process. Read on to find out what contributions users were able to make.

The Gravejo (Poland) plant of particle board manufacturer Pfleiderer was too frequently replacing high-pressure pumps on its production lines. The pumps play an essential part in the main continuous production process, delivering resinous glue to nozzles where it is sprayed on to the wood fibers.

Hoses in the plastics industry tend to be rather inconspicuous and their importance easily underestimated. However, observant visitors to a plastics processing factory are often surprised at the hugely diverse applications in which hoses are used.

“The hermetically sealed centrifugal pump outperforms magnetic-drive pumps with respect to mode of operation and reliable contents of solids and gases in the pumping medium” — the verdict of PROCESS on a new magnetic-drive pump. That was over two and a half years ago, so its now time to find out how the dry-running horizontal pump has fared in day-to-day service.

Many industrial processes require heat energy to be moved from one place to another via a heat transfer fluid: typically water and steam at temperatures up to 200 °C, and heat transfer oils for the range 200–450 °C. Pumping fluids reliably at such high temperatures is a challenge that sealless canned motor pumps can meet. The new generation of solar thermal power stations provides a practical example.