1.
Chemical industry
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The chemical industry comprises the companies that produce industrial chemicals. Central to the world economy, it converts raw materials into more than 70,000 different products. The plastics industry contains some overlap, as most chemical companies produce plastic as well as other chemicals, although chemicals were made and used throughout history, the birth of the heavy chemical industry coincided with the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution in general. One of the first chemicals to be produced in large amounts through industrial process was sulfuric acid, in 1736, the pharmacist Joshua Ward developed a process for its production that involved heating saltpeter, allowing the sulfur to oxidize and combine with water. It was the first practical production of acid on a large scale. John Roebuck and Samuel Garbett were the first to establish a factory in Prestonpans, Scotland, in 1749. In the early 18th century, cloth was bleached by treating it with urine or sour milk and exposing it to sunlight for long periods of time. His powder was made by reacting chlorine with dry slaked lime and proved to be a cheap and he opened a factory in St Rollox, north of Glasgow, and production went from just 52 tons in 1799 to almost 10,000 tons just five years later. Soda ash was used since ancient times in the production of glass, textile, soap, and paper, and the source of the potash had traditionally been wood ashes in Western Europe. By the 18th century, this source was becoming uneconomical due to deforestation, the Leblanc process was patented in 1791 by Nicolas Leblanc who then built a Leblanc plant at Saint-Denis. He was denied his prize money because of the French Revolution, however, it was in Britain that the Leblanc process really took off. William Losh built the first soda works in Britain at the Losh, Wilson and Bell works on the River Tyne in 1816, when these tariffs were repealed, the British soda industry was able to rapidly expand. James Muspratts chemical works in Liverpool and Charles Tennants complex near Glasgow became the largest chemical production centres anywhere, by the 1870s, the British soda output of 200,000 tons annually exceeded that of all other nations in the world combined. These huge factories began to produce a diversity of chemicals as the Industrial Revolution matured. Originally, large quantities of waste were vented into the environment from the production of soda. This provided for inspection of the factories and imposed heavy fines on those exceeding the limits on pollution. Methods were soon devised to make useful byproducts from the alkali, the Solvay process was developed by the Belgian industrial chemist Ernest Solvay in 1861. In 1864, Solvay and his brother Alfred constructed a plant in the Belgian town of Charleroi and in 1874, they expanded into a plant in Nancy
2.
Pulp (paper)
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Pulp is a lignocellulosic fibrous material prepared by chemically or mechanically separating cellulose fibres from wood, fiber crops or waste paper. The wood fiber sources required for pulping are 45% sawmill residue, 21% logs and chips, many kinds of paper are made from wood with nothing else mixed into them. This includes newspaper, magazines and even toilet paper, Pulp is one of the most abundant raw materials worldwide. Using wood to make paper is a recent innovation. The ancient Egyptians were the first to make paper from reeds, papermaking using cotton and linen fibers spread to Europe in the 13th century, and the increasing use of fabric brought more rag paper, which was a factor in the development of printing. By the 1800s, fibre crops such as flax, which provided linen fibres, were still the material source. Chemical processes quickly followed, first with J. Roths use of acid to treat wood, then by Benjamin Tilghmans U. S. patent on the use of calcium bisulfite, Ca2. Almost a decade later, the first commercial sulfite pulp mill was built and it used magnesium as the counter ion and was based on work by Carl Daniel Ekman. By 1900, sulfite pulping had become the dominant means of producing wood pulp, the competing chemical pulping process, the sulfate, or kraft, process, was developed by Carl F. Dahl in 1879, the first kraft mill started, in Sweden, in 1890. The invention of the boiler, by G. H. Tomlinson in the early 1930s, allowed kraft mills to recycle almost all of their pulping chemicals, global production of wood pulp in 2006 was 175 million tons. In the previous year,63 million tons of market pulp was sold, with Canada being the largest source at 21 percent of the total, chemical pulp made up 93 percent of market pulp. The timber resources used to make wood pulp are referred to as pulpwood, wood pulp comes from softwood trees such as spruce, pine, fir, larch and hemlock, and hardwoods such as eucalyptus, aspen and birch. A pulp mill is a facility that converts wood chips or other plant fibre source into a thick fiberboard which can be shipped to a paper mill for further processing. Pulp can be manufactured using mechanical, semi-chemical or fully chemical methods, the finished product may be either bleached or non-bleached, depending on the customer requirements. Wood and other plant materials used to make pulp contain three components, cellulose fibers, lignin and hemicelluloses. The aim of pulping is to break down the structure of the fibre source, be it chips, stems or other plant parts. The various mechanical pulping methods, such as groundwood and refiner mechanical pulping, much of the lignin remains adhering to the fibres
3.
Recovery boiler
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Recovery boiler is the part of Kraft process of pulping where chemicals for white liquor are recovered and reformed from black liquor, which contains lignin from previously processed wood. The black liquor is burned, generating heat, which is used in the process or in making electricity. The invention of the boiler by G. H. Tomlinson in the early 1930s was a milestone in the advancement of the kraft process, Recovery boilers are also used in the sulfite process of wood pulping, this article deals only with recovery boiler use in the Kraft process. Concentrated black liquor contains organic dissolved wood residue in addition to sodium sulfate from the cooking chemicals added at the digester, Combustion of the organic portion of chemicals produces heat. In the recovery boiler heat is used to high pressure steam. The turbine exhaust, low pressure steam is used for process heating, Combustion of black liquor in the recovery boiler furnace needs to be controlled carefully. High concentration of sulfur requires optimum process conditions to avoid production of sulfur dioxide, in addition to environmentally clean combustion, reduction of inorganic sulfur must be achieved in the char bed. Several processes occur in the boiler, Combustion of organic material in black liquor to generate heat. It was the first recovery equipment type where all processes occurred in a single vessel, the drying, combustion and subsequent reactions of black liquor all occur inside a cooled furnace. This is the idea in Tomlinson’s work. Secondly the combustion is aided by spraying the black liquor into small droplets, controlling process by directing spray proved easy. Spraying was used in rotary furnaces and with some success adapted to stationary furnace by H. K. Moore. Thirdly one can control the char bed by having primary air level at char bed surface, multiple level air system was introduced by C. L. Wagner. Recovery boilers also improved the smelt removal and it is removed directly from the furnace through smelt spouts into a dissolving tank. Some of the first recovery units employed the use of Cottrell’s electrostatic precipitator for dust recovery, babcock & Wilcox was founded in 1867 and gained early fame with its water tube boilers. The company built and put into service the first black liquor recovery boiler in the world in 1929 and this was soon followed by a unit with completely water cooled furnace at Windsor Mills in 1934. After reverberatory and rotating furnaces the recovery boiler was on its way, Recovery boilers were soon licensed and produced in Scandinavia and Japan
4.
Viscosity
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The viscosity of a fluid is a measure of its resistance to gradual deformation by shear stress or tensile stress. For liquids, it corresponds to the concept of thickness, for example. Viscosity is a property of the fluid which opposes the motion between the two surfaces of the fluid in a fluid that are moving at different velocities. For a given velocity pattern, the stress required is proportional to the fluids viscosity, a fluid that has no resistance to shear stress is known as an ideal or inviscid fluid. Zero viscosity is observed only at low temperatures in superfluids. Otherwise, all fluids have positive viscosity, and are said to be viscous or viscid. A fluid with a high viscosity, such as pitch. The word viscosity is derived from the Latin viscum, meaning mistletoe, the dynamic viscosity of a fluid expresses its resistance to shearing flows, where adjacent layers move parallel to each other with different speeds. It can be defined through the situation known as a Couette flow. This fluid has to be homogeneous in the layer and at different shear stresses, if the speed of the top plate is small enough, the fluid particles will move parallel to it, and their speed will vary linearly from zero at the bottom to u at the top. Each layer of fluid will move faster than the one just below it, in particular, the fluid will apply on the top plate a force in the direction opposite to its motion, and an equal but opposite one to the bottom plate. An external force is required in order to keep the top plate moving at constant speed. The magnitude F of this force is found to be proportional to the u and the area A of each plate. The proportionality factor μ in this formula is the viscosity of the fluid, the ratio u/y is called the rate of shear deformation or shear velocity, and is the derivative of the fluid speed in the direction perpendicular to the plates. Isaac Newton expressed the forces by the differential equation τ = μ ∂ u ∂ y, where τ = F/A. This formula assumes that the flow is moving along parallel lines and this equation can be used where the velocity does not vary linearly with y, such as in fluid flowing through a pipe. Use of the Greek letter mu for the dynamic viscosity is common among mechanical and chemical engineers. However, the Greek letter eta is used by chemists, physicists
5.
Gas turbine
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A gas turbine, also called a combustion turbine, is a type of internal combustion engine. It has an upstream rotating compressor coupled to a turbine. The basic operation of the gas turbine is similar to that of the power plant except that the working fluid is air instead of water. Fresh atmospheric air flows through a compressor that brings it to higher pressure, energy is then added by spraying fuel into the air and igniting it so the combustion generates a high-temperature flow. This high-temperature high-pressure gas enters a turbine, where it expands down to the exhaust pressure, the turbine shaft work is used to drive the compressor and other devices such as an electric generator that may be coupled to the shaft. The energy that is not used for shaft work comes out in the exhaust gases, the purpose of the gas turbine determines the design so that the most desirable energy form is maximized. Gas turbines are used to power aircraft, trains, ships, electrical generators,50, Heros Engine — Apparently, Heros steam engine was taken to be no more than a toy, and thus its full potential not realized for centuries. 1000, The Trotting Horse Lamp was used by the Chinese at lantern fairs as early as the Northern Song dynasty. When the lamp is lit, the heated airflow rises and drives an impeller with horse-riding figures attached on it,1629, Jets of steam rotated an impulse turbine that then drove a working stamping mill by means of a bevel gear, developed by Giovanni Branca. 1678, Ferdinand Verbiest built a model carriage relying on a jet for power. 1791, A patent was given to John Barber, an Englishman and his invention had most of the elements present in the modern day gas turbines. The turbine was designed to power a horseless carriage,1861, British patent no.1633 was granted to Marc Antoine Francois Mennons for a Caloric engine. The patent shows that it was a gas turbine and the show it applied to a locomotive. Also named in the patent was Nicolas de Telescheff, a Russian aviation pioneer,1872, A gas turbine engine was designed by Franz Stolze, but the engine never ran under its own power. 1894, Sir Charles Parsons patented the idea of propelling a ship with a turbine, and built a demonstration vessel. This principle of propulsion is still of some use,1895, Three 4-ton 100 kW Parsons radial flow generators were installed in Cambridge Power Station, and used to power the first electric street lighting scheme in the city. 1899, Charles Gordon Curtis patented the first gas engine in the USA. 1900, Sanford Alexander Moss submitted a thesis on gas turbines, in 1903, Moss became an engineer for General Electrics Steam Turbine Department in Lynn, Massachusetts
6.
Combined cycle
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By combining these multiple streams of work upon a single mechanical shaft turning an electric generator, the overall net efficiency of the system may be increased by 50–60%. That is, from an efficiency of say 34% to possibly an overall efficiency of 51% in net Carnot thermodynamic efficiency. This can be done because heat engines are able to use a portion of the energy their fuel generates. In an ordinary heat engine the heat from combustion is generally wasted. Combining two or more thermodynamic cycles results in improved efficiency, reducing fuel costs. In stationary power plants, a widely used combination is a gas turbine burning natural gas or synthesis gas from coal, many new gas power plants in North America and Europe are of the Combined Cycle Gas Turbine type. Such an arrangement is used for marine propulsion, and is called a combined gas. Multiple stage turbine or steam cycles are also common, however, it is common in cold climates to drive community heating systems from a power plants condenser heat. Such cogeneration systems can yield theoretical efficiencies above 95%, in automotive and aeronautical engines, turbines have been driven from the exhausts of Otto and Diesel cycles. The thermodynamic cycle of the combined cycle consists of two power plant cycles. One is the Joule or Brayton cycle which is a gas turbine cycle, the cycle 1-2-3-4-1 which is the gas turbine power plant cycle is the topping cycle. It depicts the heat and work transfer process taking place in high temperature region, the cycle a-b-c-d-e-f-a which is the Rankine steam cycle takes place at a low temperature and is known as the bottoming cycle. Transfer of heat energy from high temperature exhaust gas to water, during the constant pressure process 4-1 the exhaust gases in the gas turbine reject heat. The feed water, wet and super heated steam absorb some of this heat in the process a-b, b-c, the steam power plant gets its input heat from the high temperature exhaust gases from gas turbine power plant. The steam generated thus can be used to drive steam turbine, the Waste Heat Recovery Boiler has 3 sections, Economiser, evaporator and superheater. In a thermal station, water is the working medium. High pressure steam requires strong, bulky components, high temperatures require expensive alloys made from nickel or cobalt, rather than inexpensive steel. These alloys limit practical steam temperatures to 655 °C while the temperature of a steam plant is fixed by the temperature of the cooling water
7.
Sweden
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Sweden, officially the Kingdom of Sweden, is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe. It borders Norway to the west and Finland to the east, at 450,295 square kilometres, Sweden is the third-largest country in the European Union by area, with a total population of 10.0 million. Sweden consequently has a low density of 22 inhabitants per square kilometre. Approximately 85% of the lives in urban areas. Germanic peoples have inhabited Sweden since prehistoric times, emerging into history as the Geats/Götar and Swedes/Svear, Southern Sweden is predominantly agricultural, while the north is heavily forested. Sweden is part of the area of Fennoscandia. The climate is in very mild for its northerly latitude due to significant maritime influence. Today, Sweden is a monarchy and parliamentary democracy, with a monarch as head of state. The capital city is Stockholm, which is also the most populous city in the country, legislative power is vested in the 349-member unicameral Riksdag. Executive power is exercised by the government chaired by the prime minister, Sweden is a unitary state, currently divided into 21 counties and 290 municipalities. Sweden emerged as an independent and unified country during the Middle Ages, in the 17th century, it expanded its territories to form the Swedish Empire, which became one of the great powers of Europe until the early 18th century. Swedish territories outside the Scandinavian Peninsula were gradually lost during the 18th and 19th centuries, the last war in which Sweden was directly involved was in 1814, when Norway was militarily forced into personal union. Since then, Sweden has been at peace, maintaining a policy of neutrality in foreign affairs. The union with Norway was peacefully dissolved in 1905, leading to Swedens current borders, though Sweden was formally neutral through both world wars, Sweden engaged in humanitarian efforts, such as taking in refugees from German-occupied Europe. After the end of the Cold War, Sweden joined the European Union on 1 January 1995 and it is also a member of the United Nations, the Nordic Council, Council of Europe, the World Trade Organization and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. Sweden maintains a Nordic social welfare system that provides health care. The modern name Sweden is derived through back-formation from Old English Swēoþēod and this word is derived from Sweon/Sweonas. The Swedish name Sverige literally means Realm of the Swedes, excluding the Geats in Götaland, the etymology of Swedes, and thus Sweden, is generally not agreed upon but may derive from Proto-Germanic Swihoniz meaning ones own, referring to ones own Germanic tribe
8.
European Commission
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Commissioners swear an oath at the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg, pledging to respect the treaties and to be completely independent in carrying out their duties during their mandate. The Commission operates as a government, with 28 members of the Commission. There is one member per state, but members are bound by their oath of office to represent the general interest of the EU as a whole rather than their home state. One of the 28 is the Commission President proposed by the European Council, the current Commission is the Juncker Commission, which took office in late 2014. The procedural languages of the Commission are English, French and German, the Members of the Commission and their cabinets are based in the Berlaymont building in Brussels. The first Commission originated in 1951 as the nine-member High Authority under President Jean Monnet, the High Authority was the supranational administrative executive of the new European Coal and Steel Community. It took office first on 10 August 1952 in Luxembourg, in 1958 the Treaties of Rome had established two new communities alongside the ECSC, the European Economic Community and the European Atomic Energy Community. However their executives were called Commissions rather than High Authorities, the reason for the change in name was the new relationship between the executives and the Council. Some states such as France expressed reservations over the power of the High Authority, louis Armand led the first Commission of Euratom. Walter Hallstein led the first Commission of the EEC, holding the first formal meeting on 16 January 1958 at the Château of Val-Duchesse, Hallstein notably began the consolidation of European law and started to have a notable impact on national legislation. The three bodies, collectively named the European Executives, co-existed until 1 July 1967 when, under the Merger Treaty, the Rey Commission completed the Communitys customs union in 1968 and campaigned for a more powerful, elected, European Parliament. Despite Rey being the first President of the communities, Hallstein is seen as the first President of the modern Commission. The Malfatti and Mansholt Commissions followed with work on monetary co-operation, with that enlargement the Commissions membership increased to thirteen under the Ortoli Commission, which dealt with the enlarged community during economic and international instability at that time. Following the Jenkins Commission, Gaston Thorns Commission oversaw the Communitys enlargement to the south, the Commission headed by Jacques Delors was seen as giving the Community a sense of direction and dynamism. Delors and his team are considered as the founding fathers of the euro. The International Herald Tribune noted the work of Delors at the end of his term in 1992. He arrived when Europessimism was at its worst, although he was a little-known former French finance minister, he breathed life and hope into the EC and into the dispirited Brussels Commission. The successor to Delors was Jacques Santer, the entire Santer Commission was forced to resign in 1999 by the Parliament as result of a fraud and corruption scandal, with a central role played by Édith Cresson
9.
Lime kiln
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A lime kiln is a kiln used for the calcination of limestone to produce the form of lime called quicklime. The chemical equation for this reaction is CaCO3 + heat → CaO + CO2 This reaction takes place at 900 °C, excessive temperature is avoided because it produces unreactive, dead-burned lime. Slaked lime can be formed by mixing water with quicklime, the earliest descriptions of lime kilns differ little from those used for small-scale manufacture a century ago. Because land transportation of minerals like limestone and coal was difficult in the era, they were distributed by sea. Many preserved kilns are still to be seen on quaysides around the coasts of Britain, permanent lime kilns fall into two broad categories, flare kilns also known as intermittent or periodic kilns, and draw kilns also known as perpetual or running kilns. In a flare kiln, a layer of coal was built up. The fire was alight for several days, and then the entire kiln was emptied of the lime, in a draw kiln, the chalk was layered with coke and lit. As it burnt through, lime was extracted from the bottom of the kiln and further layers of chalk, the common feature of early kilns was an egg-cup shaped burning chamber, with an air inlet at the base, constructed of brick. Limestone was crushed to fairly uniform 20–60 mm lumps – fine stone was rejected, successive dome-shaped layers of limestone and wood or coal were built up in the kiln on grate bars across the eye. When loading was complete, the kiln was kindled at the bottom, when burnt through, the lime was cooled and raked out through the base. Fine ash dropped out and was rejected with the riddlings, only lump stone could be used, because the charge needed to breathe during firing. This also limited the size of kilns and explains why kilns were all much the same size, above a certain diameter, the half-burned charge would be likely to collapse under its own weight, extinguishing the fire. So kilns always made 25–30 tonnes of lime in a batch, typically the kiln took a day to load, three days to fire, two days to cool and a day to unload, so a one-week turnaround was normal. The degree of burning was controlled by trial and error from batch to batch by varying the amount of fuel used. Because there were large temperature differences between the center of the charge and the close to the wall, a mixture of underburned, well-burned and dead-burned lime was normally produced. Typical fuel efficiency was low, with 0.5 tonnes or more of coal being used per tonne of finished lime, lime production was sometimes carried out on an industrial scale. Sets of seven kilns were common, a loading gang and an unloading gang would work the kilns in rotation through the week. A rarely used kiln was known as a lazy kiln, the large kiln at Crindledykes near Haydon Bridge, Northumbria, was one of more than 300 in the county
10.
Evaporator
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An evaporator is a device used to turn the liquid form of a chemical into its gaseous form. The liquid is evaporated, or vaporized, into a gas, an evaporator is used in an air-conditioning system to allow a compressed cooling chemical, such as R-22 or R-410A, to evaporate from liquid to gas while absorbing heat in the process. It can also be used to water or other liquids from mixtures. The process of evaporation is used to concentrate foods and chemicals as well as salvage solvents. In the concentration process, the goal of evaporation is to vaporize most of the water from a solution which contains the desired product. In the case of desalination of sea water or in Zero Liquid Discharge plants, one of the most important applications of evaporation is in the food and beverage industry. Foods or beverages that need to last for a amount of time or need to have certain consistency, like coffee. In the pharmaceutical industry, the process is used to eliminate excess moisture, providing an easily handled product. Preservation of long-term activity or stabilization of enzymes in laboratories are greatly assisted by the evaporation process, another example of evaporation is in the recovery of sodium hydroxide in kraft pulping. Cutting down waste-handling cost is another reason for large companies to use evaporation applications. Legally, all producers of waste must dispose of waste using methods compatible with environmental guidelines, by removing moisture through vaporization, industry can greatly reduce the amount of waste product that must be processed. Water can be removed from solutions in other than evaporation, including membrane processes, liquid-liquid extractions, crystallization. Evaporation can be distinguished from some other drying methods in that the product of evaporation is a concentrated liquid. It is also simple to use and understand since it has been widely used on a large scale. In order to concentrate a product by water removal, a phase is used which allows for easy transport of the solvent rather than the solute. Water vapor is used as the phase when concentrating non-volatile components, such as proteins. Heat is added to the solution, and part of the solvent is converted into vapor, heat is the main tool in evaporation, and the process occurs more readily at high temperature and low pressures. Heat is needed to provide energy for the molecules of the solvent to leave the solution
11.
Greenhouse gas
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A greenhouse gas is a gas in an atmosphere that absorbs and emits radiation within the thermal infrared range. This process is the cause of the greenhouse effect. The primary greenhouse gases in Earths atmosphere are water vapor, carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, without greenhouse gases, the average temperature of Earths surface would be about −18 °C, rather than the present average of 15 °C. In the Solar System, the atmospheres of Venus, Mars, human activities since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution have produced a 40% increase in the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide, from 280 ppm in 1750 to 400 ppm in 2015. This increase has occurred despite the uptake of a portion of the emissions by various natural sinks involved in the carbon cycle. Anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions come from combustion of fuels, principally coal, oil. Greenhouse gases are those that absorb and emit infrared radiation in the range emitted by Earth. The proportion of an emission remaining in the atmosphere after a time is the airborne fraction. The annual airborne fraction is the ratio of the increase in a given year to that years total emissions. Over the last 50 years the annual airborne fraction for CO2 has been increasing at 0.25 ±0. 21%/year, therefore, they do not contribute significantly to the greenhouse effect and usually are omitted when discussing greenhouse gases. Some gases have indirect radiative effects and this happens in two main ways. One way is that when they break down in the atmosphere they produce another greenhouse gas, for example, methane and carbon monoxide are oxidized to give carbon dioxide. Oxidation of CO to CO2 directly produces an increase in radiative forcing although the reason is subtle. The peak of the thermal IR emission from Earths surface is close to a strong vibrational absorption band of CO2. On the other hand, the single CO vibrational band only absorbs IR at much higher frequencies, where the ~300 K thermal emission of the surface is at least a factor of ten lower. Oxidation of methane to CO2, which requires reactions with the OH radical, produces a reduction, since CO2 is a weaker greenhouse gas than methane. As described below this is not the story, since the oxidations of CO. In any case, the calculation of the radiative effect needs to include both the direct and indirect forcing
