Plant Equipment Feature Library

Operations Engineer's library catalogues editorial features going back five years.

Access to all archive material is free to all, including non-members of IPlantE (the Institution of Operations Engineers) or BES (Bureau of Engineer Surveyors), under the umbrella of SOE (Society of Operations Engineers). However, to discover the many benefits of becoming an SOE member, please click here.

07/11/2024 Small but mighty

Components such as bearings, belts and fans are no less critical to engineering operations than the giant bits of equipment they keep running. And innovation here is continuous: Louise Davis finds out what’s new in moving parts » Read More

04/05/2020 Plastic fantastic?

At the one-day Engineering Solutions Live show in March, Matthew Jones, senior applications engineer for northeast EMEA and wider EMEA at Stratasys, described the benefits that additive manufacturing can bring to industry in terms of ... » Read More

31/08/2013 The pressure is on

In straitened times, it makes sense to look for efficiency and cost-cutting opportunities – and that applies to pumps and fans, too. » Read More

05/04/2012 Pumping iron

The vast majority of pumps and fans could be running more efficiently and saving their plant operators serious money. Brian Tinham examines equipment advances and cautionary tales » Read More

06/02/2012 Cement fan solution keeps plant in production

A design fault on a large centrifugal fan that could have caused Hanson Cement's plant in Clitheroe to stop production, due to a failure to comply with emission regulations, has been resolved by Brammer. » Read More

07/06/2011 Vane engineering

With plant engineers' focus strictly on costs, uptime and efficiency, it's worth reviewing your pumps and fans – and what's on offer from variable speed drives and associated equipment. Brian Tinham reports » Read More

01/04/2009 Cut the energy hype

Although oil prices have come down, the recession is forcing organisations of all kinds to keep on cutting energy costs. One consequence is increasing numbers of companies seeing energy saving as a business opportunity - and hence the ... » Read More

01/04/2009 Compressed energy

Electric motors use two-thirds of all electricity consumed by industry, so any technology capable of cutting this drain on resources has got to be a good thing. Yet, despite proven and significant savings from variable speed drives (VSDs) ... » Read More

01/12/2007 Cooling the tube

Anyone who travels on London Underground knows that the tube is too hot, particularly on the deeper central area lines. When Transport for London's (TfL) Cooling the Tube programme director Kevin Payne tells you: "We're going to move from ... » Read More

01/10/2007 Going underground

What keeps London Underground's head of operational engineering awake at night? Top of Maurice Poole's list is the competence of project and maintenance engineering people - across all the professional sectors. That's not just in his own ... » Read More