You are here

CEP: Process Safety Beacon - What is Supporting Your Equipment?

Process Safety Beacon

February

2013

Download & Read This Article

Pipes and equipment that are not properly supported will be subject to stress, vibration, or other problems, This can cause leaks, or even a complete collapse of piping or equipment. But, problems with inadequate support of piping and other equipment are not always easy to see.

Copyright Permissions

Would you like to reuse content from CEP Magazine? It’s easy to request permission to reuse content. Simply click here to connect instantly to licensing services, where you can choose from a list of options regarding how you would like to reuse the desired content and complete the transaction.

Beware of the Dangers of Cold Traps

Cold traps — steam traps that no longer drain condensate — are often ignored in lieu of less-critical leaking traps, until a catastrophic event, such as a plant shutdown or personal injury, occurs. Use historical data to accurately estimate the annual cost of these cold traps to justify their...

Use Quantitative Gamma Scans to Troubleshoot Maldistribution on Trays

Quantitative, multichordal gamma-scan analysis is invaluable for diagnosing maldistribution and channeling in distillation columns. The graphical tool introduced here is a convenient way to visually represent the data.

Avoid Problems with Units of Measurement

Engineers need to clearly understand units, and be able to convert, express, document, and communicate them in correspondence, operating instructions, and publications.

Denmark’s Chemicals Industry: Progress and Challenges

Denmark’s chemicals industry is characterized by a variety of innovative companies, especially in the life sciences. To remain competitive, these companies must continue to invest in innovation, and the country’s universities must fill a growing need for highly educated engineering...

Consider Recycled Water for Your Cooling Tower Makeup

Many types of “used” water may be appropriate as cooling tower makeup. Here’s how to determine which waters are suitable and cost-effective for the equipment in your cooling system.

CEP: Editorial - Moving Beyond the Black Swan Excuse

Days after Superstorm Sandy hit the northeastern U.S., I attended the session “Accounting for Beyond Design Basis Events” at the 2012 AIChE Annual Meeting in Pittsburgh, where CCPS Consultant John Murphy gave a talk entitled “Beware the Black Swan.” (His paper on the same topic appeared in...

CEP: Institute News

Member NewsCalendar

CEP: AIChE Journal Highlight - Genome Mapping: Chemical Engineers Wanted

Next-generation DNA sequencing techniques have both revolutionized the field of genetics and introduced a new set of challenging bioinformatics problems. These new methods carry out a massive number of sequencing operations in parallel and read hundreds of billions of base pairs per run. (A base...

CEP: Letters

CEP: Meeting Preview - Spring Meeting and Global Congress on Process Safety Will Convene in San Antonio, Apr. 28 – May 2

New topical conferences devoted to clean energy and chemical manufacturing, a special session about P.E. licensure, and a dual-format poster session will be only some of the opportunities to learn and network at AIChE’s 2013 Spring Meeting and 9th Global Congress on Process Safety (GCPS). The...

CEP: What's New

Read about new products and services in the areas of instrumentation; fluids and solids handling; operations and maintenance; and environmental, health, and safety.

CEP: News Update

Now Available: High-Performance Carbon Nanotube Fibers; Nanowire-Based Solar Cell Achieves Record Performance; Fireflies Share Their Light Tricks with LEDs; Tissue Adhesives Are Inspired by the Prickly Porcupine; New Coating Shields Against Nearly All Liquids; and more.

CEP: Process Safety Beacon - What is Supporting Your Equipment?

Pipes and equipment that are not properly supported will be subject to stress, vibration, or other problems, This can cause leaks, or even a complete collapse of piping or equipment. But, problems with inadequate support of piping and other equipment are not always easy to see.

CEP: Profile - A Chemical Engineering Powerhouse

I like to think of myself as an engineer with an ability to bring various disciplines together to tackle tough challenges,” says Narayan Ramesh, Associate R&D Director at Dow Solar, and recipient of AIChE’s inaugural Industrial Progress Award. The honor, presented at the Nov. 2012 Annual...

CEP: Spotlight on Safety - The Importance of Considering the Highly Improbable (a.k.a. Black Swan Events)

Improbable does not mean impossible. As engineers, we tend to consider improbable things that have happened, and discard or minimize the improbable things that (to our knowledge) have not happened. Many times when the question "can this occur?" has been asked during a hazard analysis, the response...

CEP: Career Corner - Managing Your Career Transition

Sooner or later during our professional careers, most of us will change jobs, get promoted, move into a different line of work, or even get laid off. My experience is a good example. I moved from an entry-level R&D engineer to a commercial development engineer, later to a business planning...

CEP: Software

CEP: Product Digest

This month's topic is materials.

CEP Showcase

CEP Marketplace

CEP: Recruitment Classifieds