Use of Cheaper Raw Materials

The availability of bright yellow sulfur at low cost is declining all over the world and this is adversely affecting the economy of sulfuric acid plants. Hence, it has become imperative to explore the use of cheaper raw materials. Some of these are as follows  

Use of these materials can cause operating problems like reduced life of heat exchanger tubes, masking of active surfaces of catalyst, agglomeration of catalyst particles, and escape of acid mist from the stack exit gases. 

Pre-treatment of these materials or very efficient gas cleaning equipments (e.g., wet electrostatic precipitators) can be looked into and their designs improved further from present levels. 

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Use of cheaper raw materials like agricultural waste or dairy waste can help reduction in the cost of fermentative production. 

Industries are interested in green chemistry because reduction in energy, improvement in yield, and use of cheaper raw materials lead to reduction in working capital and an increase in profits. Industries are also interested in improving the safety, health, and... 

Alkoxides are described in some literature as expensive educts prohibiting mass production. A solution to this problem is the use of cheaper raw materials such as water glass or sodium silicate (Na2 i03) for sihca [50], which is now used as general precursor for commercial aerogel synthesis for technical applications. A silica hydrogel is generated by acidification of the aqueous sodium silicate solution with e.g. HCl or H2SO4 [51,52]. 

ALMA gaseous emission reduction aqueous effluent reduction process water reduction use of cheaper raw materials energetic recovery lower investment costs... 

Although cyclohexane oxidation dominates the market, because of cheaper raw materials, the hydrogenation of phenol remains competitive, offering better selectivity with fewer environmental and safety problems. In addition, this process allows efficient valorization of phenol-rich wastes from coal industries. Recently built plants make use of this technology, as reported by the engineering group Aker-Kvaerner (www.kvaerner.com, 2004). The availability of low-price phenol is the most important element for profitability. Besides the well-known cumene process, a promising route is the selective oxidation of benzene with N20 on iron-modified ZSM-5 catalyst [12]. In this way, the price of phenol may become independent of the market of acetone. 

A major challenge will be to develop new processes or step-up technologies that increase the yield and/or selectivity, use cheaper raw materials, decrease energy consumption, minimize the product separation and purification needs and lower capital investment. Iimoyative step-out technologies can still have a major impact on existing processes. An excellent example of such an accomplishment is the reactive distillation process developed by Eastman Chemicals for production of methyl acetate by via the reaction [2]... 

In conclusion, the economically competitive, non-subsidized production of liquid biofuels requires (a) the use cheaper and more reliable sources of renewable raw material (b) efficient conversion, with minimum waste, of cellulosic, fiber or wood-based, waste biomass into fermentable sugars (c) significantly improved efficiency of the production processes and (d) use by-products (e.g., glycerol in biodiesel production). Several of these aspects are discussed in details in various chapters. 

Obvious goals in bioprocessing are to minimise raw material costs and reaction times, and to maximise product concentrations, yields and purities. However the effect of varying any one variable on the overall process must be accurately assessed. This can be difficult because of the interdependence of many of these variables, making computer models a very useful tool. Thus the use of a cheaper raw material may appear to be attractive, but if this material is of significantly lower purity and so requires costly purification prior to use, or if the product derived from it needs more extensive... 

Apart from development of new catalysts with enhanced activity, few processes with innovative chemistry are currently developed for C-H transformation in aromatics. Though new processes using cheaper raw materials or reducing the number of reaction steps may seem attractive at first glance, efforts for process development including research, scale-up, pilot plant, and timeline must be considered. Especially for large scale-synthesis of bulk chemicals process economics... 

The development of ACF and AC cloths is closely related to that of carbon fibers (CFs). This makes that the raw materials used for the preparation of ACFs be, chronologically, the same as for CFs. Thus, in 1966, viscose and acetate cloths were, like for CFs, the first materials used to obtain ACFs [4, 5]. The low yield of the ACFs, and CFs, obtained from the above precursors, oriented the research towards the seek of other raw materials for the preparation of cheaper CFs and ACFs with a higher yield. In this way, ACFs were prepared from 1970 using lignin (with the brand of Kayacarbon ALF), polyvinylchloride [6] (i.e., Saran polymer, already used to obtain ACs) and phenolic precursors [7]. The high yield and the good mechanical properties of the ACFs obtained make these precursors very useful for this application. In fact. Economy and Lin [8] developed ACFs from a phenol formaldehyde precursor, which are commercialized since 1976 under the name of Novolak. In 1980, Kuray Chemical Co. Ltd commercialized ACFs from phenolic resin under the name of Kynol. ... 

No definition of the work of the chemical engineer is adequate to identify all of his many capabilities and roles. These, however, may be generalized and integrated by a simple expression—he converts cheaper raw materials into finished products which are more valuable to man s use through processes, usually involving physical and/or chemical transformation. These processes involve a series of steps skillfully chosen and arranged to give products which may be sold at an acceptable profit. 

Acquisition of novel catabolic activities has been deliberately studied since the early 1960s and is of particular applied relevance for bioremediation of waste or by-products from manufacturing processes and improving the ability to use cheaper raw materials in the production of commodity chemicals. Most... 

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