Corrosion is the mortal enemy of engineers and plant managers. It is one of the most frequent causes of equipment failure in a wide variety of plants, from power plants to steel mills, paper mills, and cement & lime plants. Corrosion, if left unchecked, can cause equipment to break and… Read More
In a typical power plant, there are a million and one things that need to be watched, maintained, and repaired if necessary. Most of us pay special attention to the major systems and their critical components. But one often-overlooked component is equipment coating systems. The most attention many engineers and… Read More
Heat rate improvement and thermal efficiency enhancement is the name of the game for power plants today. With each percentage point of improvement, a plant gains bottom-line benefits that justify the investment of the improvements. But big capital projects aren’t the only initiatives that can improve heat rate and thermal… Read More
One of the many ideas presented at the climate meeting in Bonn, Germany, was that of co-firing biomass and coal in order to potentially decrease CO2 emissions and increase efficiency. Could it be effective? Some say yes, but others aren’t so optimistic. A Divided Opinion Some experts believe that if… Read More
BACT (Best Available Control Technology) standards are a part of every industrial plant manager’s life. As a part of the Clean Air Act, these standards require industries to implement the best possible technology in order to take pollutants out of their emissions stream. Because they’re different from state to state,… Read More
The pulp and paper industry produces some of the greatest amounts of waste across the industrial sector. This is due to the high amount of water and energy used in the production process. Each production step generates its own waste, and each one poses a unique threat to the environment,… Read More
In a world where emissions regulations are the norm and biomass plants are facing the strictest anti-emissions policies in history, keeping your plant in compliance is vital. But it’s hard to balance emissions compliance and plant efficiency, so what’s a plant manager to do? Read on for tips to keep… Read More
The production of biogas depends on feedstock and environmental conditions, like temperature. For those who are looking for a more consistent supply of heat and power within the commercial or industrial context, this kind of variability can pose a substantial challenge. One potential solution is fuel blending. This process uses… Read More
Thanks to an intelligence-based control system and researchers at Idaho National Laboratory’s bioenergy program, the reliability of feedstock preprocessing equipment has increased more than 50 percent. Keep reading to learn more about this improvement! The Basics of Preprocessing Before their conversion into fuels and products, feedstocks have to go through… Read More
It’s easy to see when there’s a part of your plant that’s broken – the problem is obvious, you take steps to repair it, and (hopefully) it works properly again. But there’s another set of problems that can be just as damaging to a plant as a broken piece of… Read More
