January 2012

Happy New Year! As I wrote in a previous introduction, this year's issues will follow the same general plan as that for 2011, in terms of features, which you can access, together with the new rate card for advertising, by clicking on the link alongside. For advertising specials and contracts, including covers, call Brenda on +27 11 622 4770. She's waiting to hear from you! I would also welcome any calls with suggestions or offers of feature articles for this year. Let's make 2012 the best year ever for ‘Chemical Technology'.

Our Special Report this month is entitled "Preservation to feed the 9 billion". Gavin Chait, our regular contributor to this section, writes with his usual easy-flowing style about a topic of interest to our technically minded readers.

Water treatment

The water treatment feature article is concerned with water recycling, specifically about how to brew beer without water. Dr Bernard Talbot begins his article thus: "Effluent should be recycled back into brewery operations with less reticence than is currently the case. Throughout Africa and many other parts of the world we encounter areas or entire regions where water is scarce and water quality highly suspect. In these situations beer quality is often compromised and production schedule disrupted. The use of properly treated effluent presents the brewer with a safer option and greater security of supply."

Pumps, valves and actuators

Brian Hubbard of Cat Pumps looks back at the basics of applying triplex positive displacement pumps. To quote: "In any application where a high pressure liquid stream is required and a sufficiently smooth flow rate needs to be achieved, the triplex positive displacement (PD) pump is arguably the most suitable choice. Such is the versatility of the technology, the triplex PD pump can be found providing high levels of accuracy and operating safety in many applications within the chemical processing industry, where both benign and corrosive liquids are encountered."

Control and instrumentation engineering

This month, our article comes from VEGA Instruments and discusses nucleonic measurement.

Solids handling

A look at the convenient coffee industry and the solids handling processes that take place in it. The story comes from GEA Process Engineering and is about Niro's equipment and processes.

Regular Features