New solvent cleaner

Vacuum News O p e r a t i o n a l status of Flexible Ducting Ltd Flexible Ducting Ltd have released the following background mformat~on on the company and its operations. Formed 21 years ago by the parent company, George MacLellan ~t Co Ltd (now George MacLellan Holding Ltd) of Glasgow, to take up under the European Recovery Scheme a licensing arrangement with the Flexible Tubing Corp of Guddford, Connect=cut. The ~ssued capital was £5000. Today Flexible Ductmg Ltd, own a modern custom-budt budding on a 6-acre site covering 80,000 ft 2 , it has ~tself been twice extended since the original 30,000 ft 2 factory was erected m 1964, the latest 24,000 ft 2 being added last year. More than 180 people are employed, many working on a three-shift, round-the-clock system The most sophisticated automated hose-making machines m the world outside the Umted States are m operation and much of the other equipment has been designed and budt by the company themselves. New records m sales and production have been estabhshed every year since the company was founded, today's volume is running at the rate of more than £2,000,000 a year, more than half of which is exported. Making the most of hcence opportunities, the onginal product, Spiratube, has been steaddy augmented by dozens of others for apphcatlon in the alr-condltmnmg, automotive, domestic apphance, aircraft, shlpbuddmg, engineering, electromc and many other industries. An extenswe network of overseas d~str~butors has been budt up, many of whom have been associated with Flexible Ductmg almost since its reception. In Germany, the company established their own marketing orgamsatlon, KG Flexschlauch Produktlons GmbH Et Co m 1970. Flexible Ductmg Ltd Circle number 44 on Reader Enquiry Serwce card

RPL pumps solve Powell Duffryn's w i n e problem Over a quarter of all UK wine imports is handled by Powell Duffryn's Wharfage ~ Transport at Shoreham, some 10-mdhon gallons of wine passing through the terminal every year. Their bulk wine terminal has a storage capacity of 1 mdhon gallons. Problem has been pumping the wine from ships to quayside - - as much as 300 ft. Existing pumps failed to cope with the demand for self priming from 23 ft and outputs of 6000 gals/h. Now H Erben Ltd, the installers, have substituted four RPL type CEHE self-priming pumps m stainless steel which are trolley mounted and have superb NPSH performance. Ryaland Pumps Ltd Circle number 45 on Reader Enquiry Serwce card

New solvent cleaner A new solvent recovery umt Type A1 manufactured by Drostholm Products of Denmark has now been introduced to the UK by C ~ A Simms (Eng) Ltd of Chester. The machine is capable of cleamng acetone, benzole, ethanol, methanol, methylene chloride, xylene, ~so-propyl alcohol, toluene, and trichloroethylene, at the rate of 7 gallons/h. It has a recovery rate of approximately 95%, dependent upon the level of contamination in the solvent. Using a 440 V 3 phase power supply the machine has an automatic switch off. C ~ A Simms (Engineers) Ltd Circle number 46 on Reader Enquiry Serwce card

93,000 psi tube f i t t i n g Almost the complete Crawford range of valves and tube fittings was displayed on the Techmatlon stand, at the Power Et Control Exhibition, Earls Court in Aprd. Several products shown for the first time Jn the UK included the Swagelok 'Miniature quick-connects' for GC sampling and a Cajon ultra-high vacuum flange. The new Wh~tey "swing-a-way' ball valve, the centre body section of which swings away for easy access to serwce the seals and ball, is designed for fluids with impuntles, slurries and the like, and is roddable. Also exhibited was a Sno-Trik high pressure tube fitting on a 3/16 m. stainless steel tubing which had been subjected to very high pressures. The tubing burst at 93,000 psi The standard rating of these fittings is 60,000 ps.. Techmatlon Ltd Circle number 47 on Reader Enquiry Serwce card

Coal gasification p i l o t p l a n t Start-up operations of a pdot plant in England for converting coal into a high quahty pipeline gas have been announced by COGAS Development Co, a pnvately financed consortium based at Princeton, NJ. The pilot plant, hawng a char feed capacLty equivalent to 100 tons of coal per day, is located near London at the facilities of the British Coal Utihsatlon Research Assomation (BCURA), and is part of an initial $7 million development programme by COGAS. Members of the COGAS consortium formed in July, 1972 include : Consolidated Natural Gas Co (Pittsburgh), FMC Corp (Chicago), Panhandle Eastern Pipe Line Co (Houston), Republic Steel Corp (Cleveland), Rocky Mountain Energy Co (Denver), a wholly owned subsidiary of Union Pacific Corp, and Tennessee Gas Pipeline Co, a division of Tenneco Inc (Houston). The BCURA pilot plant will help demonstrate the operability of the process and provide engineering data for a larger scale demonstration or commercial famhty. The COGAS Process is a 'clean energy from coal' operation totally financed by private industry, and was conceived as an effective way to produce gas and o=1 from domestic coal reserves The process employs multistage pyrolysis of coal which initially makes a synthetic crude oil, a char, and a pyrolysis gas. The heart of the process, the step being piloted at BCURA, is gasification of the char with steam at low pressure, using proprietary technology to produce a synthesis gas. The pyrolysis and synthesis gases, which are rich in carbon monoxide and hydrogen, are then combined, punfied, and reacted to form methane, a high quality pipehne gas. The expected favourable economics of the COGAS process derive from four features : the use of air rather than oxygen to supply the steam-carbon reaction heat to create the synthesis gas, the recovery of the valuable oil co-product, the use of low operating pressures which eliminate expensive operating problems, and the improved reactivity of the char produced by the fluldlzed bed pyrolysis. COGAS Development Co Circle number 48 on Reader Enquiry Serwce card 401