The Monitor

The power industry has changed drastically, and the ability to start up quickly and generate reliably and economically are no longer luxuries, but requirements. That puts more pressure than ever on your steam and water sampling system. Here’s what you need to know to minimize the adverse effects of cycling on chemistry results and streamline busy start up times. This information was originally presented by John Powalisz at the 37th Annual Electric Utility Chemistry Workshop, held June 6-8 in Champaign, Illinois.

Steam and water sampling is a key component of a successful chemistry program in cycling power plants. It helps protect both equipment and plant personnel, while ensuring maximum output, helping identify and predict failures, and helping start up the unit faster.

Topics: Power, Steam & Water

Expanding regulations. Foodborne illness outbreaks and product recalls. Intensifying demand for food and beverage safety. The challenges in food and beverage production are growing more intense every year. How can you keep up?

Topics: Food & Beverage

Cation resin can last a few days or several months, and it can be difficult to predict the lifespan even in ideal conditions. So how do you know if your resin is still functional at any given time? What does it take to prolong the life of resin – and how do you know when it’s time to refill or regenerate it? It all starts with understanding the cation resin lifespan and the many factors that affect it. Read on so you’ll never get caught with depleted resin again.

Topics: Power, Steam & Water

Just as trusted ingredients are critical to a food production operation; automated sampling is a critical part of any ingredient manufacturer’s processes. A nutrition and health food ingredient supplier to the food, beverage and dietary supplement industries needed to analyze representative samples of its product: polydextrose, which is a sweetener ingredient used in bakery products, beverages and baby food.

This food supplier’s customers requested it use modern biological contamination sampling techniques of its product to ensure quality.

Topics: Food & Beverage

In the food industry, aseptic equipment is vital to ensure food safety. That equipment includes aseptic samplers. These are used by quality control personnel to easily and safely sample liquids from closed systems such as food and beverage process lines and vessels. 

Topics: Food & Beverage

This article originally appeared in the Spring issue of the Packaging + Processing OEM published by The Association for Packaging and Processing Technologies. It has been republished below for our readers like yourself!

As low-moisture food producers seek to meet new sanitation standards, they are looking to machinery advances to improve food safety and minimize the risk of recalls. The Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) requirement for sanitary equipment design poses a challenge for many processors in this market.

Topics: Food & Beverage

Within the oil and gas industry, hydrocarbon liquids such as crude oil, condensates, and oil and water mixtures must be sampled to yield representative samples for analysis. The resulting data is used for quality control, to determine product properties and composition, and for fiscal calculations, allocations and loss control.

In addition to complying with custody transfer standards such as API 8.2 and ASTM D 4177, the advantages of representative sampling include:

•  Higher return on investment
•  Better loss control
•  Lower operating costs

Topics: Upstream & Midstream

Metal corrosion within a power plant has the potential to cause catastrophic assets failure, injuring operators and damaging the environment and communities – plus causing costly downtime. For those reasons, identifying sources of, controlling and preventing corrosion are primary concerns of water chemists in a power plant.

Topics: Power

Oil and gas producers worldwide – such as in Trinidad – with both onshore and offshore facilities are challenged with the high cost and safety issues associated with retrieving corrosion monitoring and chemical injection equipment from pipelines.

Topics: Upstream & Midstream

With its numerous mountain ranges and valleys, and the Yangtze River running through it, the Sichuan region of southwest China is the country’s fifth largest province in terms of land. It is an important region that needs to be protected because of its agriculture, wildlife and historical significance to the country. Referred to as “The Land of Abundance,” the province contains many of China’s natural wonders, wildlife preserves, archaeological sites, ancient engineering achievements, museums and historical buildings – all tourist attractions. It also is China's leading agricultural producer of rice, wheat, sugarcane and other crops, and the western plateau and mountainous regions are important environmental and forest regions, rich in bamboo, white wax and ingredients for traditional Chinese medicine.

Topics: Downstream