Industrial Factory Automation

Three Cospect pressure-reducing valves from TLV Euro Engineering have proved their performance and reliability in a recent sterile services trial at Blackpool Victoria hospital. As in most hospitals, the Blackpool Victoria's steam plant plays a vital role by delivering high-quality steam to the hospital's two autoclaves, which were installed more than 10 years ago. Due to the complexity of the autoclaves, when they were installed the hospital's 7 bar main steam supply was fed into a single pressure-reducing valve to reduce it to 4 bar before being fed into two separate pressure-reducing valves, which deliver the 2 bar of steam required by each autoclave. The quality and temperature of the steam supplied to the sterilisers is constantly monitored by staff in the hospital's control room to ensure that it is meeting the standard required to sterilise effectively. An alarm is sounded if the stringent preset parameters are not met. The system safeguarding the quality of the...

Severn Trent Water (STW) has initiated a de-sludging trial to reduce costs and energy consumption by producing thicker sludge in the Primary Settlement Tank (PST). Advanced monitoring instrumentation from Hach Lange played a key role in the trial. STW's Mark Bryan summarised the objective of the trial: 'We believed that if we could monitor and control the settlement process through a real-time control mechanism, we would be able to produce thicker sludge, reduce operational intervention and save the energy and costs involved with further sludge thickening prior to the sludge-digestion process. The trial took place at STW's Stoke Bardolph Sewage Treatment Works. Monitoring and control instrumentation was provided by Hach Lange and a hydraulically operated ram pump with an adaptive control system was provided by EMS Industries. A Sonatax SC probe was deployed for the measurement of sludge blanket level and a Solitax SC probe provided suspended solids and turbidity values. Al...

The Dow Chemical Company and the China Datang Inner Mongolia Duolun Coal Chemical Company have carried out a trial run of the Unipol polypropylene (PP) gas phase technology unit in China. The trial run took place on 18 November, with the first production of Aim-grade polypropylene resin. Once fully operational, the plant will produce 460,000 tons of PP per year. PP is a versatile plastic used in packaging, durable goods, automotive parts, non-wovens, fibres and consumer applications. Dave Jerger, senior improvement leader for Unipol PP licensing and catalyst, said: 'Since 2006, seven polypropylene plants in Asia have chosen Unipol PP technology. 'The simple and safe design, low investment and extremely economical production process of this technology make it an attractive solution for China PP producers,' he added.