Warrendale, Pennsylvania, USA, 2012-Apr-04: The Italian company Multiservizi will install a Sludge Belt Dryer (SBD) from Siemens Industry Automation Division at its plant in the city of Jesi, Ancona. The belt dryer evaporation capacity is 2000 kg/hr. Once the dryer becomes operational in 2012, it will allow the Jesi plant to reduce the amount of biosolids produced annually by roughly 75 percent.

Multiservizi, a publicly owned Italian company, operates water and wastewater treatment plants for 45 communities in Italy. The plant in Jesi serves 60,000 residents. Its new SBD from Siemens will reduce sludge production from 16,500 to 4,125 tons per year. The plant, which also has a natural gas boiler, is designed to recover thermal energy from the cogeneration plant, thus reducing CO2 emissions.

With the SBD, evaporation takes place when biosolids come in contact with the heated air. Biosolids are uniformly distributed on the entire belt width to cause uniform evaporation. The dryer is supplied in a two-belt system configuration. The belt speed and the temperature of the process air can be adjusted for different residence times. Varying residence time in the drying zone provides the means to adjust the product moisture to meet final use or disposal requirements.

The Siemens' thermal drying system was selected because of the technology's high reliability and safety, low maintenance, and high automation level. Other advantages include high energy efficiency, minimal environmental impact, and agriculture-grade pathogen reduction.

Steam, gas, and the most varied liquids play an important role in all industrial fields. To optimize costs and process sequences, their consumption, storage, and demand have to be controlled at regular intervals. Vortex meters are eminently practical for such tasks. They are easily assembled, reliable, accurate, and suitable for almost any fluid. Above all for steam applications, these versatile measuring devices have, in the meantime, quite established themselves. Users profit from several aspects of the new devices: they are highly resistant, work reliably under even the harshest of conditions and offer convenient evaluation functions. Versions with an integrated temperature sensor, for instance, render additional sensors and calculator units to balance the energy of saturated steam superfluous for many applications.

To further read this article please click 'Vortex Meters for Liquids, Gas, and Steam'

How the measurement of gas purity plays an important role across multiple gas processing industries and applications, mainly for the purpose of detecting gas impurities across a particular process. For example, in chemical reactions, one has to ensure the gases are free of carbon monoxide (CO) because of the risk of poisoning precious catalysts, oxygen (O2) might oxidize catalysts, and carbon dioxide (CO2) might form carbamates or carbonates which may clog process gas lines and lead to costly repairs.

Read the complete article at Emerson Process Management

A fluid automation product such as a valve operates to shut on and off — to control — the flow of a process liquid, or the supply of compressed air. However, perceptive managers realize that valves, pneumatic actuators, and similar components can do something more. They can control the flow of profit. In fact, their speed and reliability can provide competitive economic advantages in operations worldwide. Because these fluid automation products offer exceptional opportunities to extend overall  equipment service life, reduce warranty costs, cut maintenance/ repair/operations (MRO) inventories, and increase production uptime and productivity.

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