Chemical Processing Distilled

In this episode Traci Purdum discusses Lynn Bergeson’s latest article "EPA, HHS Move Microplastics from Fringe Concern to Federal Priority"

July 15, 2026

For a long time, microplastics were treated as a recycling problem or a marine litter problem. That changed this spring. On April 6, 2026, two federal agencies moved on the same day in ways that push microplastics squarely into the compliance conversation.

Compliance Advisor columns.

In this episode of Chemical Processing's Distilled podcast, host Traci Purdum talks with Brad Buecker, senior technical consultant at Samco Technologies, about sodium softening — the workhorse treatment for industrial boiler makeup water. Buecker explains how hardness ions cause scale, why residual bicarbonate drives corrosive condensate return lines, and how to spot early warning signs of a poorly monitored softener. He shares real-world cases where bypassing softeners or delaying maintenance led to rapid boiler tube failures and six-figure losses, walks through the regeneration cycle and its common pitfalls, and compares sodium softening with reverse osmosis for higher-pressure systems.

Inconsistencies found across major references for common substances raise a harder question about what we assume we know and whether that's enough for design, operation and troubleshooting.

This podcast is an In Case You Missed It of the column that appeared on our site July 1. You can read it here.

Two hundred and fifty years ago this week, a group of delegates in Philadelphia signed their names to the Declaration of Independence. Today, we are going to talk about how chemistry made it all possible.

Olin and Huntsman announce a $12.5 billion tie-up, Evonik cuts 3,200 jobs and BASF's CEO warns of an oil shock — while Covestro bets on biology to clean up aniline production.

This episode digs into three plant-floor challenges that look simple until physics intervenes—bulk solids handling, heat pump-driven distillation savings and a water pump's mysterious cycling problem traced back to Bernoulli's principle.

Sources: "Bulk Solids and Powders: Flow, Storage and Conveyor Design in Chemical Plants" by Amin Almasi (Equipment Insights, June 8, 2026) | "Heat Pumps Slash Waste in Distillation Operations" by Thomas Kwan (Energy Saver, Feb. 16, 2026) | "Why This Water Pump Kept Cycling Off" by Andrew Sloley (Plant InSites, Jan. 26, 2026). All published on ChemicalProcessing.com.

Decades before the Strait of Hormuz closed and refineries started burning, process safety's great philosopher mapped exactly how pressure corrupts risk decisions.

This month's top stories cover an NRC environmental clearance for an advanced reactor in Texas, a deadly hydrogen sulfide incident under CSB investigation, SOCMA's regulatory priorities and new industry developments.

In every organization, informal hierarchies determine who gets heard, who gets interrupted and whose concerns get taken seriously. In process safety, the cost of getting it wrong is high. In this In Case You Missed It episode, Editor Traci Purdum reads a column from Lauren Neal, Chemical Processing's Workforce Matters expert. You can read the column here.

Experienced operators don't just know what to do — they know what to watch, regardless of how conditions change. That ability hinges on perceptual invariants: the critical relationships and variables that remain meaningful even as everything else shifts. Human factors engineer Dave Strobhar explains how identifying and reinforcing these invariants is the key to effective operator training. Rather than relying on years of trial and error, structured training programs — including targeted simulator use — can accelerate expertise dramatically. The goal is moving operators from simple stimulus-response behavior to true skill-based thinking that transfers across novel situations, closing the experience gap faster than ever before.