The Author

Dr. Lanny Robbins, president of Larco Technologies
LLC, is a consultant. He retired
with the title of Research
Fellow after 37 years at The
Dow Chemical Company at
Midland, Michigan. In 2006
Dr. Robbins was elected to
the National Academy of
Engineering. He also received
the Marston Medal, which is
the top honor awarded by the
Department of Engineering, Iowa State University. His expertise is in fundamental chemical engineering research and pilot
plant process development, especially for separation and purification processes. He has developed unique technology for
scale-down and scientific study of plant processes to generate
experimental data for successful scale-up. He is the author
of the liquid–liquid extraction chapters in Perry’s Chemical
Engineer’s Handbook, sixth and seventh editions, and
Schweitzer’s Handbook of Separation Techniques for Chemical
Engineers, first through third editions. Robbins has researched,
developed, and implemented many separation and purification
unit operations used at Dow.
Dr. Robbins is an inventor of two new liquid distributor designs for packed distillation, absorption, and stripping
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