Production plants together

SASOLII a.ndIII. Two additional plants weie built and aie in operation in South Africa near Secunda. The combined annual coal consumption for SASOL II, commissioned in 1980, and SASOL III, in 1983, is 25 x 10 t, and these plants together produce approximately 1.3 x lO" m (80,000 barrels) per day of transportation fuels. A block flow diagram for these processes is shown in Figure 15. The product distribution for SASOL II and III is much narrower in comparison to SASOL I. The later plants use only fluid-bed reactor technology, and extensive use of secondary catalytic processing of intermediates (alkylation, polymerisation, etc) is practiced to maximise the production of transportation fuels. 

This step is so important that some laboratory plants, and usually all pilot and production plants, are equipped with respective mechanisms. The principle is simple The shelves are connected flexibly with inlet and outlet of the brine. The shelves are pressed together, one after the other, by a plate, which is moved by an external force in this way the stoppers are pushed into the closed position. If the pressure necessary for this stopper movement is 1 kg per stopper, the resulting total force for 100 vials per shelf is 100 kg, but if 10 000 vials are loaded per shelf, the total force is 10 tonnes, which has to be applied evenly in order to avoid vials breakage. 

Fig. 2.49.2. Schema of a freeze drying production plant with approx. 20 m2 shelf area. The chamber and condenser are in the same vacuum chamber, separated by a wall in which the valve is built, providing the shortest possible path for the water vapor. The condenser and the brine heat exchanger are cooled by LN2. The condenser surface is made from plates (Fig. 2.49.3), its temperature can be controlled between -110 °C and -60 °C. The shelves can be controlled by the circulated brine between -70 °C and +50 °C. The trays with product can be automatically loaded and unloaded from a trolley. The shelves can be pressed together in one block and the trays are loaded to the shelves by pushing one shelf after another in front of the trolley.

The new alkaloid LC-2 was isolated fiom Lupinus cosentinii (87). It is considered to be a multiflorine derivative, probably an intermediate product in the biosynthesis of the latter alkaloid and occurring in plants together. There are absorption bands at 1580-1625 (——CH=CH—CO— ), 920, and 990 cm (—CH=CH2) in the IR spectrum of this alkaloid. In the H-NMR spectrum there are proton signals presented as doublets at 8 4.92 and 6.86, as in multiflorine (85). Alkaloid LC-2 is converted to desoxyhexahydrorhombifoline (86) by reduction with zinc in 2 N HCl (Scheme 4). Alkaloid LC-2 appears to be a tricyclic quinolizidine alkaloid, and its structure is given by formula 87. 

Lindhauer (2005) recently carried out pilot-plant scale trials of an H202-based alkali extraction process, where a product was separated that had a purity of 70-80% arabinoxylans and a yield of 50% of the initial wheat bran. This process is expected to be commercialised as an integrated plant together with bioethanol production. 

Jerusalem artichoke is a plant with distinctive chemical properties. Inulin is stored as a reserve carbohydrate in the tubers, whereas starch is the storage form of carbon in most plants. Together with a low-fat and mineral-rich profile, inulin gives Jerusalem artichoke tubers their unique value in the human diet, in nutritional and medicinal products, and in animal feed. 

Volatile Oils.— Thesc are volatile odoriferous principles found in various parts of numerous plants which arise either as a direct product of the protoplasm or through a decomposition of a layer of the cell wall which Tschirch designates a resinogenous layer. They are readily distilled from plants, together with watery vapor, are slightly soluble in water, but very soluble in fixed oils, ether, chloroform, glacial acetic acid, naphtha, alcohol, benzin and benzol. They leave a spot on paper which, however, soon disappears. They respond to osmic acid, alkannin, Sudan III, and cyanin stains similar to the fixed oils and fats. 

In a chemical production plant, a large number of different machines, fittings, and safety equipment must work together reliably. With suitable engineering design, the amount of residues can be reduced or the residues can be recovered. 

In the composite curves (Fig. 58), the cold and hot streams of a production plant are plotted against temperature. When the two curves are shifted horizontally relative to each other until the minimum temperature difference necessary for heat-transfer processes is reached at the point where the curves come closest together (pinch), this gives the theoretical minimum for the heat streams that must be supplied or removed (hot and cold utility targets). 

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