An Australian team has developed a structure made of a metal organic framework (MOF) that captures and then releases CO2 using natural sunlight. The team includes researchers from: CSIRO Division of Materials Science and Engineering, (Clayton South, Victoria; www.csiro.au) the…
Plant Watch AkzoNobel Chemical Island starts supply to world’s biggest single-line pulp mill March 7, 2013 — AkzoNobel’s (Amsterdam, The Netherlands; www.akzonobel.com) new €90-million Jupiá Chemical Island in Brazil has begun supplying the Eldorado Brasil Celulose pulp mill, which is…
Biosteel The worlds first artificial-silk fiber that is entirely made of recombinant spider-silk proteins has been produced by AMSilk GmbH (Planegg/Martinsreid, Germany; www.amsilk.com), a spin-off company of the Technical University of Munich. The fibers tensile strength is comparable to…
A new plant for manufacturing sodium silicide (Na4Si4;diagram), a non-flammable, air-stable powder that reacts with water to generate pure hydrogen, is under development near Niagara Falls, N.Y. by SiGNa Chemistry Inc. (New York; signachem.com). Scheduled for startup in the third…
Toyo Engineering Corp. (Toyo; Chiba, Japan; www.toyo-eng.co.jp) has been jointly awarded with ENPPI, an engineering company under the Egyptian Ministry of Petroleum, a contract to build a 400,000 ton/yr polyethylene (PE) plant as part of Ethydco's petrochemical complex to be…
China Petrochemical International Ltd. (Sinopec International), Sinopec Sichuan Vinylon Works (SVW) and Davy Process Technology (Davy; London, England; www.davyprotech.com), a wholly owned Johnson Matthey subsidiary, are pleased to announce the acceptance of a 771,000 metric ton (m.t.) per year methanol…
ThyssenKrupp Polysius has won a contract from PT Holcim Indonesia Tbk., Jakarta, to build a second cement plant near the town of Tuban on the northern coast of the island of Java. The contract is worth around $250 million and…
UOP LLC (Des Plaines, Ill.; www.uop.com), a Honeywell company, says that its UOP C3 Oleflex process technology has been selected by Williams (Tulsa, Okla.) to produce propylene, a valuable petrochemical used in plastics production. The selection is the sixth win…
PPC (Thann, France; www.ppchemicals.com), a company of WeylChem Group (Frankfurt am Main, Germany; www.weylchem.com), the fine chemicals platform of International Chemical Investors Group (ICIG; Luxembourg), has secured bank financing from Commerzbank for the conversion of the mercury electrolysis plant. The…
Uhde Inventa-Fischer (Domat/Ems, Switzerland; www.uhde-inventa-fischer.com) and JSC Grodno Azot PTC Khimvolokno (Belarus) have successfully commissioned a plant for the production of polyamide 6. The multiline plant is located in Grodno, Western Belarus, has a capacity of 91,000 metric tons (m.t.)…