The Monitor

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. 

Read More

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.

Read More

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.

Read More

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.

Read More

Topics: Food & Beverage

Cleaning sampling equipment used in food production is very important. Food producers need to have confidence that their automated samplers are cleaned and maintained properly to eliminate contamination and potential recalls and their associated costs. Thorough cleaning and sanitizing of food-handling machines, and equipment, including food and beverage samplers is a requirement of a robust hazard analysis and critical control points (HACCP) plan.

Read More

Topics: Food & Beverage

In recent years, purchasing food product recall and contamination insurance has become more common as food producers seek to reduce their risk. It’s become more prevalent as companies stop self-insuring due to the serious potential financial and brand consequences of recalls. Even large food producers are considering recall liability insurance as they face potential lost revenue from a costly recall. For small companies, a recall can put them out of business.

Yet, many food producers may still be missing the relationship between representative sampling at various stages throughout the production process and their liability insurance rates.

Read More

Topics: Food & Beverage

The logic forming the basis of the old saying “what you can’t measure, you can’t control” has justified generations of increasingly sophisticated process monitoring and control technologies. As the requirements for continually improved manufacturing processes evolve, this trend will drive future research, development, and implementation.

Read More

Topics: Downstream

The chemical compatibility of materials used to construct analytical systems for sampling, transfer, and analysis of oil and gas must be carefully considered to maximize reliability. Specifically, virtually all natural gas samples contain sulfur compounds which need to be precisely quantified for quality purposes. In most applications, sulfur compounds like hydrogen sulfide (H₂S) must be quantified at the parts-per-million (ppm) and sometimes even parts-per-billion (ppb) level.

However, the stainless steel components that typically make up a gas sampler are prone to absorbing sulfur compounds onto the surface. Though this problem may seem negligible in gas samples with a high percentage of sulfur concentrations, it is impossible to accurately quantify sulfur and other active compounds at trace levels without first treating the stainless steel flow path.

Read More

Topics: Upstream & Midstream, Gas

This article contains excerpts from an article that originally appeared on FoodProcessing.com. It has been republished below for our readers like yourself!

Thorough cleaning and sanitizing of food-handling machines and equipment is a requirement, but the task becomes easier and faster when upfront consideration is given to sanitary design.

With implementation of the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) under way, sanitary design migrated from a nice-to-have to a must-have for the processing and handling equipment inside food & beverage manufacturing facilities.

Read More

Topics: Food & Beverage

A large parabolic trough solar power plant in the southwest part of the U.S. uses two 125 megawatt (net) steam turbine generators to generate more than 250 megawatts of energy. Since the power plant uses solar energy to create steam that drives a turbine, the plant faces many of the same concerns as a conventional fossil fueled power plant.

Therefore, it is critical to safely monitor and measure the quality of the steam and water used when generating steam. For this reason, a conventional steam and water analysis system (SWAS) was part of the original construction.

Read More

Topics: Power, Steam & Water