artículos técnicos

Process Hazard Analysis (PHA) provides a means of systematically reviewing the design and operation of a facility to identify occurrence of hazardous events with potential consequences on people, property and production, environment and reputation (a more new issue to be considered in a PHA). PHA studies can be conducted not only on continuous and batch chemical processes, but also on storage, transportation and other operating, manufacturing or support systems. This paper describes the main elements to be considered when conducting such an analysis.

Less than one percent of all the water on our planet is accessible and usable for domestic and industrial purposes. In view of the growing global population and increasing urbanization, it is therefore vital that we find new ways of using our limited resources of drinking water more sustainably and more efficiently and of using new technologies to make existing water resources potable. The same applies to the treatment of wastewater, as 80% of municipal sewage currently flows untreated into our rivers, lakes and seas.

INERCO is currently developing major worldwide projects in the matter of industrial safety for large engineering companies and operators in industries such as Oil & Gas (upstream and downstream), petrochemical, chemical, mining and energy.

In the recent years in Spain mostly of the installed power plants are thermal solar power plants, mainly due to the grants provided by local administration for the construction of these renewable energy power plants, and because it uses the sun as an infinite and free source of energy. In this way, we can say that Spain is one of the leading countries in technology and design in these type of power plants being a reference in the world for this type of projects. Besides, it is clear that these type of power plants are still under development, and need to be improved in all technical aspects due to the lack of accumulate experience.

Physical Assets Management is a much broader approach, and a more challenging scope, than just the maintenance of physical equipment. The asset management models are suitable to treat the current requirements of the systems, including cost, value, risks, and throughout the life cycle. New skills and tools for maintenance management have to be integrated within these models. This paper presents this approach about integrating the development and use of maintenance tools into asset management models. With this view, graphic tools for maintenance management and advanced CBM (Condition-Based Maintenance) systems are analyzed. These tools can play a fundamental role in the effective implementation of assets management models. They allow gathering the information about the system behavior and its interpreting according with strategic aims of assets management.

Advantages and disadvantages of industrial atmospheric emissions “primary” valorization, understood as implemented in situ and without any previous treatment of the emissions, are compared with those of other type of valorization, called here as “secondary” valorization, as made after some post-treatment of the emissions or, simply, to categorize with a different name that those classified as primary, verifying in this second categorization some alteration in the original emissions nature

Maintenance resources and their optimization are an important issue for companies. Because of this, is important to have an appropriated maintenance management framework for helping the asset management processes. In this paper we develop one of the main steps of the main maintenance management models, criticality analysis. For a proper asset management structure, criticality analysis is a key tool who introduces the best asset management practises in companies. In this context, this article shows an appropriate methodology for a criticality analysis development and how to fix the different criteria.

Multiple emulsions are also known as double emulsions or liquid membrane systems. The most common multiple emulsions are the water-in-oil-in-water (W1/O/W2) type. In this work basic concepts of double emulsions structure, formulation, stability, characterization and preparation methods, along with some applications, are summarized.  Special attention is given to the encapsulation of bioactive and functional compounds, which are widely used in the pharmaceutical and food industries.

Measures taken until now to fight climate change are insufficient according to the IPCC. Innovative sustainable solutions are urgently needed, also from the chemical industry, which requires intensive R&D and investments. Examples are cited of recently developed chemical solutions applied to energy storage, CO2 Capture and Sequestration, and biofuels production.

El Real Decreto 180/2015 desarrolla el artículo 25 de la Ley 22/2011 de residuos y suelos contaminados, con el objetivo de regular los traslados de los residuos - sean o no peligrosos- desde una comunidad autónoma a otra, para su valorización o eliminación, incluidos los traslados que se producen a instalaciones que realizan operaciones de valorización o eliminación intermedias. Este real decreto entró en vigor el 8 de mayo de 2015. Su objetivo es fijar unas normas que, además de asegurar un cumplimiento de la normativa medioambiental, permita mantener la unidad de mercado.