Chemical Processing Distilled

Replace-in-kind fixes are supposed to be the easy path back to normal operation. But once a change crosses a technical or regulatory threshold — like a decades-old foundation rating — the schedule, not the engineering, becomes the real constraint. Traci Purdum, Chemical Processing's EIC, reads Andrew Sloley's latest Plant InSites column.

In October’s Distilled News, executives at the CIEX R&D Innovation Summit explain how AmSty, Hexion and 3M are using AI and operational excellence to drive innovation. Also: BASF’s possible takeover of Evonik, plant closures from Goodyear and Westlake, and Sumitomo Chemical’s production-scale bio-based LCP.

How AI is reshaping pipeline leak detection? Chemical Processing Editor-in-Chief Traci Purdum talks with KROHNE's Maximilian Ihring and Daniel Vogt to answer that question. The following conversation, edited for clarity, examines how conventional systems rely on static hydraulic models that lose accuracy as conditions change. KROHNE's PipePatrol NEO layers supervised machine learning on proven phy...

In this episode of Chemical Processing's Distilled podcast, Editor-in-Chief Traci Purdum talks with water treatment expert Brad Buecker about the hidden risks of remote cooling systems scattered around large plants. Buecker explains how scale formation and microbiological fouling quietly degrade heat transfer, why cooling towers concentrate impurities and complicate chemistry, and why monthly vend...

In a chemical facility, choosing the person who feels safest is understandable. These are high-risk environments where poor decisions can affect production, people and plant. Nobody wants to experiment with leadership when the consequences of getting it wrong can be dire. The problem is that competence is not the same as readiness, and familiarity is not the same as low risk. When succession decis...

Schneider Electric's Thomas Kwan explains why chemical plants should map their loads before buying software, and why "the optimizer decides" isn't an operating philosophy. Jonathan Katz, executive editor of Chemical Processing, recently spoke with Thomas Kwan, an energy transition expert at the Schneider Electric Sustainability Research Institute, about his most recent Energy Saver column for Chem...

In September's Distilled News, a federal appeals court strikes down the EPA's methylene chloride ban, three chemical makers agree to pay $455 million over PFAS, and BASF and Kemira look at new production.

In this episode of the Chemical Processing Distilled Podcast, Brad Buecker of SAMCO Technologies joins editor-in-chief Traci Purdum to dig deeper into reverse osmosis for boiler makeup water. Buecker contrasts RO with sodium softening, explaining how RO removes up to 99% of dissolved ions, cutting corrosion, scaling and blowdown compared to softening alone. He stresses that raw water quality and p...

An Eastman Chemical veteran-turned-leadership coach explains why technical excellence doesn't translate to leadership skill — and how organizations can close the "broken rung" that pushes women out of the pipeline right after their first promotion.

ICIS's Al Greenwood explains why ethane-fed commodity producers are cashing in while specialty chemical makers struggle to pass on higher costs.  Read the full article. 

This month, we cover the U.S. Chemical Safety Board's final report on the fatal Aug. 11 explosion at U.S. Steel's Clairton Coke Works, Argonne National Laboratory's progress on extracting lithium and other critical minerals from oilfield wastewater, and a new $100 million DOE initiative to train the next generation of critical-minerals workers.

From steam trap sprawl to a phenol plant that ignored 400x the recommended organic carbon limit, Brad Buecker walks through why condensate return demands real chemistry — and the tools (ion exchange, activated carbon, film-forming amines) that make it work.

Selecting the right Coriolis flow meter tube design goes beyond pressure, temperature and flow rate specs — it can reduce how much a plant spends on pumps and energy for the life of a pipeline. In this Solution Spotlight episode of Chemical Processing Distilled, Al Dhanji, chemical industry manager for the Americas at KROHNE, breaks down straight tube versus bent tube designs and how each handles...

Emerson's Michael Machuca explains how non-intrusive flow, temperature, corrosion and acoustic monitoring help chemical manufacturers boost safety, reliability and sustainability without cutting into pipes or halting production. Sponsored by Emerson

This month: fatal H2S release investigation findings, the final Conyers warehouse fire report, ACC's pushback on Brazil tariffs and a call for unified EPA-OSHA chemical safety rules and a reality check on AI in advanced process control.

In this episode Traci Purdum discusses Lynn Bergeson’s latest article " EPA, HHS Move Microplastics from Fringe Concern to Federal Priority " July 15, 2026 For a long time, microplastics were treated as a recycling problem or a marine litter problem. That changed this spring. On April 6, 2026, two federal agencies moved on the same day in ways that push microplastics squarely into the compliance c...

In this episode of Chemical Processing's Distilled podcast, host Traci Purdum talks with Brad Buecker, senior technical consultant at Samco Technologies, about sodium softening — the workhorse treatment for industrial boiler makeup water. Buecker explains how hardness ions cause scale, why residual bicarbonate drives corrosive condensate return lines, and how to spot early warning signs of a poorl...

Inconsistencies found across major references for common substances raise a harder question about what we assume we know and whether that's enough for design, operation and troubleshooting. This podcast is an In Case You Missed It of the column that appeared on our site July 1. You can read it here.

Two hundred and fifty years ago this week, a group of delegates in Philadelphia signed their names to the Declaration of Independence. Today, we are going to talk about how chemistry made it all possible.

Olin and Huntsman announce a $12.5 billion tie-up, Evonik cuts 3,200 jobs and BASF's CEO warns of an oil shock — while Covestro bets on biology to clean up aniline production.

This episode digs into three plant-floor challenges that look simple until physics intervenes—bulk solids handling, heat pump-driven distillation savings and a water pump's mysterious cycling problem traced back to Bernoulli's principle. Sources: " Bulk Solids and Powders: Flow, Storage and Conveyor Design in Chemical Plants " by Amin Almasi (Equipment Insights, June 8, 2026) | " Heat Pumps Slash...

Decades before the Strait of Hormuz closed and refineries started burning, process safety's great philosopher mapped exactly how pressure corrupts risk decisions.

This month's top stories cover an NRC environmental clearance for an advanced reactor in Texas, a deadly hydrogen sulfide incident under CSB investigation, SOCMA's regulatory priorities and new industry developments.

In every organization, informal hierarchies determine who gets heard, who gets interrupted and whose concerns get taken seriously. In process safety, the cost of getting it wrong is high. In this In Case You Missed It episode, Editor Traci Purdum reads a column from Lauren Neal, Chemical Processing's Workforce Matters expert. You can read the column here.

Experienced operators don't just know what to do — they know what to watch, regardless of how conditions change. That ability hinges on perceptual invariants: the critical relationships and variables that remain meaningful even as everything else shifts. Human factors engineer Dave Strobhar explains how identifying and reinforcing these invariants is the key to effective operator training. Rather...