November 2011

The November issue is out, leaving one more for the year 2011. I can hardly believe it. Next year's issues will follow the same general plan in terms of features, which you can access, together with the new rate card for advertising, by clicking on the link alongside. Book your space now; there are very few covers open at this stage.

Our Special Report, entitled "Alternative energy's sexier cousin: Alternative meat". Read Gavin Chait's take on this new technological development. You can be sure he will entertain while educating you on the ins and outs of the topic. Next month he will take on watching paint dry, in order to advise us on new trends in the paint industry.

The Petrochemicals feature article is concerned with the safety aspects of refineries: "A practical ‘live' migration strategy for upgrading safety systems in the oil and gas industry". It deals with the distributed control system (DCS) which manages the normal operation of the plant and the safety instrumented systems (SIS) which are intended to preserve life, the environment and the equipment being monitored. Implementing a safety system upgrade requires an in-depth analysis and risk assessment of the existing technology, so you have a solid understanding of the requirements needed for a new system. A safety system upgrade should follow a systematic and well-documented process.

Control and Instrumentation Engineering - This article is based on an article by Tim Treadgold, entitled ‘Multi-faceted approach to improve iron ore industry', which appeared in tha recent issue of the Australian CSIRO's magazine, ‘Process'. The science of adding years to known ore resources and converting lower grade deposits into viable mines is the challenge facing a 30-member CSIRO team in Australia, which is researching all facets of iron ore, from exploration to processing. The ongoing project uses HyLoggingTM technology as part of a multi-faceted approach. The HyLogging System^TM is a laboratory-based tool that takes and stores images of core and scans them for a wide variety of minerals. The system can replace time-consuming, and subjective, core examination.

Environmental Engineering and Management -There are three articles in this feature, all covering different aspects of the topic, the first consisting of an introduction to Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) laying out the basics behind LCA studies and explains what it is, who would use it and how to perform such a study. In this article, the basic concepts of LCA are presented in order to understand it more clearly.

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