In The News
This membrane system extracts hydrogen from mixed gas streams
A metal membrane system developed by Eltron Research and Development (Boulder, Colo., www.eltronresearch.com) separates hydrogen from mixed-gas feed streams that result from gasification, steam reforming and petrochemical processes. Based on a proprietary, dense metal alloy with hydrogen permeability that is…
A promising way to reduce the cost of producing oil from oil sands
Roughly 80% of the heavy oil in Alberta’s oil sands is too deep for open-pit mining, the most common production method at present. Consequently, this oil will have to be recovered by in situ methods, such as steam-assisted gravity drainage…
ABB wins three-year maintenance-partnership agreement in Oman
ABB (Houston; www.abb.com) has announced that its local company in Oman, ABB Oman LLC has signed a three-year maintenance agreement for Vale’s (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; www.vale.com) state-of-the-art iron-ore pellet plant and distribution center in Oman. This maintenance partnership agreement…
Food from algae
TNO (Delft; www.tno.nl) and Ingrepro Renewables B.V. (Borculo, both the Netherlands; www.ingrepro.nl) have started a joint-research project to extract food ingredients from algae. Proteins, which account for up to 60 wt.% of algae, could serve as a sustainable alternative to…
Solar Semi Engineering acquires Edwards CME
Solar Semi Engineering Ltd. (SSE; U.K.; www.solsemi.com) , a solar and semiconductor start-up company, today purchased the business and assets of Edwards Chemical Management Europe Limited (CME; Newhaven, U.K.) for an undisclosed sum. CME is part of Edwards (Crawley, U.K.; www.edwardsvacuum.com),…
Sugar-derived compounds can be model solidifiers for oil spills
Professor George John and graduate student Swapnil Jadhav at the City College of New York (www.ccny.cuny.edu) are lead authors of a paper on a class of compounds, known as phase-selective gelators, that can selectively solidify an oil phase in water.…
KBR & Saudi Kayan: Startup of grassroots cracker
KBR Inc. (Houston; www.kbr.com) today announced the start-up of a 1.35-million metric tons per year (m.t./yr) steam cracker at Saudi Kayan Petrochemical Co.’s (Saudi Kayan) olefins plant located in Saudi Kayan’s Petrochemical Complex at Al-Jubail, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. KBR executed…
September chementator briefs
Worlds largest PDH unit Lummus Technology (Bloomfield, N.J.), a CB&I company (The Woodlands, Tex.; www.cbi.com), has been awarded a contract by Tianjin Bohua Petrochemical Co. for the license and engineering design of a grassroots propane dehydrogenation (PDH) unit to…
KBR lands contract for LiOH-operation expansion
KBR Inc. (Houston; www.kbr.com) announced that its Downstream business unit has been awarded a contract to provide engineering and procurement services to Chemetall Foote Corp. (www.chemetalllithium.com) — a subsidiary of Rockwood Holdings, Inc. (www.rocksp.com) — for the addition of lithium…
Lonza acquires Vivante GMP Solutions
Lonza (Basel, Switzerland; www.lonza.com) enters the viral based-manufacturing market today with its purchase of Vivante GMP Solutions, Inc. (Houston; www.vivante-gmp.com) The acquisition advances Lonza’s strategy to broaden its biologics custom service offering for the growing viral vaccine and gene therapy…