For those less familiar with the terminology and concepts of cryogenics and cryogenic heat transfer or heat exchangers this article provides some background and context.

Following on from the introductory article on Distillation Fundamentals, this article delves a little deeper into some of the methods used in distillation column process design focussing mainly on ‘binary systems’.

Lets try to answer this fundamental question – what is gas Processing, and why do it?

A cryogenic process is one that operates well below ambient temperature. The article introduces for the non-specialist some of the terminology and concepts of cryogenic engineering.

Cryogenic – from Greek Kryo (cold) ‘Cold Generation’. ‘Cold’ is a concept used by practitioners and is the antithesis of heat, or heat below ambient temperature.

In physics and engineering it’s an important characteristic or ‘property’ of a fluid in the gas state.

Like in so many areas in language we unconsciously adopt analogies from some unrelated field to help us describe something else. Pressure has found its way into everyday language.

This is an important theme for process engineers / chemical engineers. The ability to ‘model’ parts or most of a chemical process constitutes a vital powerful tool in design, operations and troubleshooting.

Most resources are finite. If not there would be no issue, but our world is not like that. There are typically a number of opportunities to deploy any finite resource. In simple terms some provide more benefit than others.

Distillation is still the most widely used method to separate chemical species in the process industries. This introductory article covers some distillation basics for the non-specialist.

Safety in design requires a good understanding of the conditions in all the interconnected elements of a plant.  These conditions do not vary significantly with time in a continuous process plant – except during start-up or shutdown, or serious upset. Based on this, a new approach to Hazop studies is introduced to speed hazard identification. Some Cryogenic process risks are also discussed.

As an aviation fuel, liquid hydrogen theoretically has an intrinsic merit because of its high energy per unit mass and zero CO2 emission from combustion. In contrast conventional jet fuel incurs a significant parasitic payload mass with a mass heating value of 37% of liquid hydrogen. However other factors must be considered.

In our world the developed and developing worlds have a rapidly growing energy demand. There is increased pressure to restrict sources of this energy to non-fossil sources. Renewables are a partial solution, provided the wind blows and the sun shines.

Combine this with aggressive geopolitics, its not surprising that energy costs swing like a pendulum.

EXERGY is a concept that - once grasped - can enable us to make objective decisions about how we obtain and use energy.

Helium is present in atmospheric air at 5.2 ppm. It is uneconomic to recover this except perhaps in the very largest air separation plants. Fortunately, it may also be present at fractions of a percent up to a few percent (rarely) in natural gas and this represents a valuable and essentially a depleting resource.

This article is as written in the spring of 2020 at the start of the initial wave of the Covid-19 pandemic in Europe.

“It seems that the Corona virus will spread inexorably. Once you cut through the panic and BS, the government plan is to slow the spread so that the health services (and other services) are not completely overwhelmed.

Based on an Excel program I made to chart and predict the possible progress based on the SIR model, a significant proportion of the UK population will have been infected before this is over.”