Trading platforms

E-trading platform Furniture Buckets E-exchange Extruded flat tape ... 

E-trading platform Focus on highly standardized commodity chemicals Real-time auctions Financial products for risk management E-exchange Focus on intermediates, fine chemicals and specialties Auctions based on bid and ask system Additional value added services, e.g., online product testing... 

E-trading platforms. Because of the neutrality they offer to suppliers and custom-rs, the natural owners of the e-trading platforms will be independent companies. However, any intermediary wiU depend on the support of major industry players on the suppHer or customer side. The independent entity could, like Enron, also provide special financial skills outside the core competence of chemical companies. Chemical companies would be well advised to apply the same equity-holding approach to e-trading platforms as described above for e-exchanges. 

The market is a traditional OTC one, with trades conducted on the telephone directly between banking counterparties or via brokers. There are a number of electronic trading platforms being developed primarily for the interbank market. 

Fritz, M., T. Hausen and G. Schiefer, 2004. Developments and development directions of electronic trade platforms in US and European agri-food markets Impact on sector organization. International Food and Agribusiness Management Review , 1-20. 

A common problem experienced under the current automation paradigm, with the demand for greater results in shorter iteration cycles (1-2 weeks), is that screeners are required to collect data from several single assay workstations, often run on different software platforms. With the demand for results on more compounds per week, the screeners must process more samples through the assays, each with fewer data points and replicates. This trade off in quality for quantity can result in lower overall data fidelity. 

For most measurement techniques a trade-off exists between time response and sensitivity. Instruments can be made to respond more rapidly, but then noise levels and detection limits increase. To fulfill certain measurement objectives for which sensitivity is not a problem, it may be useful to enhance the time response of the instrument and accept the decrease in sensitivity. In any event, careful consideration must be made in the design of any sampling program to ascertain what level of concentrations needs to be measured and what time-space resolution is required. These issues will determine the characteristics of the airborne platform and the instruments that will be used and will dictate how they will be deployed. 

Figure 13.14. A centrifugal packed fractionator, trade name HIGEE, Imperial Chemical Industries. Units have been operated with 500 times gravitational acceleration, with 3-18 theoretical stages, up to 36 in. dia, employing perforated metal packing. For distillation, one unit is needed for rectification and one for stripping. Units have been used primarily for gas stripping and on offshore platforms because of compactness [Ramshaw, Chem. Eng., 13-14 (Feb. 1983)].

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