The Monitor

What does it take to design a practical and reliable steam sampling system? Find out what you need to know to practically implement steam sampling guidelines in your process environment. 

Steam sampling is sometimes viewed as a necessary evil in a process plant. However, the absence of steam due to a boiler shutdown makes for a bad day at a refinery, petrochemical or specialty chemical plant. But one size doesn’t fit all, and a number of variables must be considered to design and implement a practical, reliable steam sampling system.

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Topics: Power, Downstream, 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?

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Topics: Food & Beverage

Since a steam and water analysis system (SWAS) is critical to any power plant, any variation from optimal operation and consistent steam and water sampling can lead to problems that cause added time and expense.

The burning question is: Do you trust your process analytics?

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Topics: Power, Steam & Water

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.

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Topics: Power, Steam & Water

A flour mill operations manager often starts the day by checking processing data in the lab where product samples are tested to assess the mill’s performance and check for any issues such as contamination.

Proper flour sampling can make or break quality control analysis in a flour milling operation. A quality control test is only as good as the tested sample, which is only as good as the flour sampling technique used to obtain a true representative sample that has the characteristics of the whole lot or batch that’s tested.

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Topics: Food & Beverage, Solids & Powder

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.

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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. 

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Topics: Food & Beverage

Internal metal corrosion in hazardous liquid, gas transmission and gas-gathering applications is inevitable and continues to cause leaks and catastrophic failures. Due to the fact that internal corrosion is time dependent, the number of incidents could be increasing due to aging pipeline infrastructure. Such disasters can damage the environment and cause costly downtime and waste in pipeline productivity – in addition to astronomical cleanup costs.

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Topics: Downstream, Upstream & Midstream

Sampling is important in any processing plant if it’s going to continue to operate safely and reliably. In chemical and petrochemical plants, obtaining representative samples that accurately provide the intelligence needed to ensure plant processes run smoothly is vital.

When processing stops due to a breakdown or when safety is compromised due to lack of inspection, maintenance or proper repair, it’s costly. Proactive and regular maintenance of your samplers is one of the best ways to maintain their peak performance and avoid malfunctions or breakdowns during use – which can lead to significant losses in plant productivity and efficiency.

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Topics: Downstream

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.

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Topics: Food & Beverage