Guest Editorial

Abstract

Karl Kolmetz has over 25 years of progressive experience in the design, construction, commissioning, and operations management of process units from the U.S. Gulf Coast to Alaska through Asia. He has a strong background in the manufacturing of a wide variety of chemical process technologies and product categories including cryogenic liquids, ethylene, propylene, benzene and toluene extraction, styrene, catalytic reforming, crude atmospheric and vacuum fractionation, polyvinyl chloride, and steam and power plant operations. Mr Kolmetz has substantial experience in the design and troubleshooting of distillation columns, which is one of the key unit operations in hydrocarbon production. His experience includes 4 years of construction, 2 of which were on the Alaskan Pipeline with Fluor Daniel, 16 years of refining experience in the Charter/Phibro (now Valero) Refinery in Houston, Texas, and 1 year of commissioning experience with Raytheon Badger ethyl benzene (EB)/styrene plants in Asia, with a total of 3 years of EB/styrene experience. He also has seven years ethylene experience: 4 years in Louisiana and 3 years in Malaysia with the Westlake/Titan Group. He has two years of specialty distillation design experience as the Asia Pacific Technology Manager for Sulzer Chemtech, a leading distillation company, and the KLM Technology Group. Karl is currently General Manager for GTC Technology, Singapore. His publications include authoring and coauthoring over 40 technical papers on a variety of subjects for product recovery, troubleshooting, training, project management, and process design with safety and environmental concerns. His papers have appeared in the Oil and Gas Journal (5), Hydrocarbon Processing (1), and Chemical Engineering Progress (1). He has presented papers at AIChE Conferences, the Indian Oil & Gas Conference, the Japan Petroleum Institute Refining Conference, Oil and Fats International Congress, UTM Best Practices in Process Plant Management, and the Asean Regional Olefins Conferences, as well as others. He has a Bachelor of Science degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of Houston. He is a member of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers and the American Chemical Society. Karl presently lives in Malaysia. DISTILLATION 2007 EDITIONDistillation is part art and part science, therefore a good distillation designer needs to be part artist and part scientist. The first distillation equipment was designed, installed, and tested in the field before the science of how it fundamentally functions was developed. It required an artist's feel of how the fluid and vapor would travel in the column and through the equipment. Distillation history has been one of trial and error iteration followed by fundamentals development.Distillation encompasses many fields, including art, mathematics, chemistry, physics, and engineering: from chemical engineering there are the inputs of equilibrium and thermodynamics; from civil engineering there are the inputs of hydraulics and flow; from mechanical engineering th...