2013

Understand what kind of pressure-relief valves you have in your plant, and know what you must do to ensure that they work properly.

This month's topic is valves.

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...

Read about new products and services on exhibit at the Air and Waste Management Association Expo.

Many of us remember receiving our polio vaccine on a sugar cube. Indeed, that was the motivation behind A Spoonful of Sugar, a song from the classic Disney movie Mary Poppins. Walt Disney had instructed the Sherman brothers, Robert and Richard, to come up with a catchy song for the film. When Robert arrived at home, after working all day trying to come up with an idea, his wife told him that the children had gotten their polio vaccine that day. Thinking they had gotten a shot, he asked them if it hurt. His son answered that the medicine was put on a cube of sugar and he swallowed it. And so “a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down was born.

On a cold February day in 1996, I was on a flight from Washington DC. Due to a horrific snowstorm, the flight landed 30 minutes late and passengers scrambled to make their connections. I turned to the pregnant passenger next to me to see if she needed...