Refining Nature

The Standard Oil Company emerged out of obscurity in the 1860s to capture 90 percent of the petroleum refining industry in the United States during the Gilded Age. John D. Rockefeller, the company’s founder, organized the company around an almost religious dedication to principles of efficiency. Economic success masked the dark side of efficiency as Standard Oil dumped oil waste into public waterways, filled the urban atmosphere with acrid smoke, and created a consumer safety crisis by selling kerosene below congressional standards. Local governments, guided by a desire to favor the interests of business, deployed elaborate engineering solutions to tackle petroleum pollution at taxpayer expense rather than heed public calls to abate waste streams at their source. Only when refinery pollutants threatened the health of the Great Lakes in the twentieth century did the federal government respond to a nascent environmental movement. Organized around the four classical elements at the core of Standard Oil’s success (earth, air, fire, and water), Refining Nature provides an ecological context for the rise of one of the most important corporations in American history.

Peter Walker is one of the most seminal and prolific figures in contemporary landscape design worldwide – both as a teacher and as practitioner. Among his best-known works are Nasher Garden in Dallas, Novartis Campus in Basel, Switzerland and the World Trade Center Memorial in New York. This academic review of Walker's unique oeuvre look closely at his design work and provides a comparative analysis.

This book examines the literature of Shiga Naoya, who is highly regarded in modern Japan for his unique style and methods of describing his personal experiences and emotions. Contributing new findings to the field of scholarship on Shiga, this study focuses in particular on Shiga’s nature-inspired writings and discusses how he created some vivid images of nature that became famous and still linger in Japanese people’s minds. Shiga’s remarkable sensitivity toward nature and the influences he received from earlier writers in Japan and abroad is examined. The complexity and depth of his understanding of nature is further revealed in his fascination with the supernatural, which also contributed to the creation of his literary style.

Peter Walker is one of the most seminal and prolific figures in contemporary landscape design worldwide – both as a teacher and as practitioner. Among his best-known works are Nasher Garden in Dallas, Novartis Campus in Basel, Switzerland and the World Trade Center Memorial in New York. This academic review of Walker's unique oeuvre look closely at his design work and provides a comparative analysis.

The Fischer-Tropsch process is gaining recognition again due to the world-wide increase in energy needs and decrease in oil availability. The increasing interest in utilizing biomass as a potential renewable feedstock in energy generation is further supporting this development. The book covers the production and refining of Fischer-Tropsch syncrude to fuels and chemicals systematically and comprehensively, presenting a wealth of new knowledge and material. As such, it deals extensively with aspects of engineering, chemistry and catalysis. This handbook and ready reference adopts a fundamental approach, looking at the molecules and their transformation from feed to product. Numerous examples illustrate the possibilities and limitations of Fischer-Tropsch syncrude as feesdstock. Of great interest to everyone interested in refining - not just Fischer-Tropsch specialists. From the Contents: Fischer-Tropsch Facilities and Refineries at a Glance Production of Fischer-Tropsch Syncrude Industrial Fischer-Tropsch Facilities Synthetic Transportation Fuels Refining Technology Refinery Design

Petroleum refining involves refining crude petroleum as well as producing raw materials for the petrochemical industry. This book covers current refinery processes and process-types that are likely to come on-stream during the next three to five decades. The book includes (1) comparisons of conventional feedstocks with heavy oil, tar sand bitumen, and bio-feedstocks; (2) properties and refinability of the various feedstocks; (3) thermal processes versus hydroprocesses; and (4) the influence of refining on the environment.

Vols. for 1887-92 include proceedings of 1-6th annual convention of the International Association of Factory Inspectors of North America.

Supported by numerous illustrations and references, this book describes the chemistry and physics that occur during the refinery operations, and how the properties of petroleum can be translated into predictability in refinery scenarios. The chapters discuss such topics as: the composition of petroleum, petroleum analysis and evaluation; metals and heteroatoms in petroleum; asphaltenes and the structure of petroleum, thermal chemistry of petroleum constituents; heavy oil upgrading processes; hydrocracking reactions, catalysts, and processes; and instability and incompatibility of petroleum products.