February 2016

Another electric shop and pump shop at the same South American oil refinery. All images courtesy of Larry Bachus.
Pumps, Motors & Drives

When process pump meets electric motor

Feb. 5, 2016
Pumps far outnumber compressors, mixers, fans, blowers, internal combustion engines, turbines and gearboxes and represent as much as 85 percent of all rotating equipment in some...
Figure 1. Chase and Mayer’s approach to separation. All graphics courtesy BHS-Sonthofen GmbH
Filtration & Separation

Solid-liquid filtration basics

Feb. 5, 2016
Process engineers use their own kind of sleuthing to select the right type of liquid/solid separating equipment. It’s not an easy task.
X-ray machines for packaging products are typically located at the end of the production line for final inspection before dispatch. All images courtesy of Mettler-Toledo
News & Notes

5 steps for food packaging safety with X-ray inspection

Feb. 5, 2016
Quality checks to detect physical contaminants in retail packaged products can prove challenging, even with X-ray inspection systems specifically designed to inspect food packaging...
Image 1. When oil moves any appreciable distance through a pipeline, pumping stations maintain product throughput rates. All images courtesy of McCrometer
Instrumentation

Fit the pumping technology to the task

Feb. 2, 2016
A regional pipeline company’s process engineers searched for a low cost but accurate flow measurement solution for internal inventory monitoring at its pump stations.
Figure 1. UYS data measured with a new UPT is in close agreement with that derived from traditional biaxial shear cell data. Graphics courtesy of Freeman.
Powder & Bulk Solids

Efficient powder handling critical for success of industrial processes

Feb. 2, 2016
Powder processing is widely recognized as being challenging, with unit operations often exhibiting lower reliability and greater variability than those only involving liquids ...