Cognis GmbH (Monheim, Germany; www.cognis.com) has opened an affiliate in Mumbai, India. As of today, Cognis India will be a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Cognis Group, and will operate under the name of Cognis Specialty Chemicals Pvt. Ltd. Cognis first…
Bayer MaterialScience (BMS; Leverkusen, Germany; www.bayermaterialscience.com), a global leader in high-value polymers, announced an alliance with Nano Terra Inc. (Cambridge, Mass.; www.nanoterra.com), a leading surface engineering and nanotechnology co-development company. Nano Terra will apply its unique surface engineering expertise to…
Siemens Energy (Erlangen, Germany; www.powergeneration.siemens.com) has built a large ground-based photovoltaic (PV) plant in Italy under contract to Ferrarelle S.p.A, the Italian bottled water company. The turnkey solar power plant, with a peak capacity of 1 megawatt (MWp), was constructed…
HPD (Plainfield, Ill.), a Veolia Water Solutions & Technologies company (www.veoliawater.com), has been awarded the front-end engineering design (FEED) phase for Natural Soda’s proposed “State of the Art” expansion at its existing facility near Rifle, Colorado. The design effort from…
Süd-Chemie AG (www.sud-chemie.com) The Linde Group (Both Munich, Germany; www.linde.com) have started up a pilot plant for processing lignocellulosic biomass (straw) into biofuels. The facility — officially opened at Süd-Chemie’s research center in Munich-Obersendling on April 27 — will be…
Solutia Inc. (St. Louis, Mo.;www.solutia.com) will be supplying Therminol synthetic heat transfer fluid to a new 50-MW, solar-thermal power plant in Lebrija, Spain, which will start up in spring 2010. Iberese, a Spanish company dedicated to building and managing plants…
ESK Ceramics GmbH & Co. KG (Kempten, Germany; www.esk.com) and Ceratec Technical Ceramics BV (Geldermalsen, Netherlands; www.ceratec.nl), have deepened their already 20-year-old, successful business relationship. At the end of 2008, the two partners signed a contract focusing on intensifying joint…
Sarlink (Sittard, Netherlands; www.sarlink.com) has officially opened a new production facility in Genk, Belgium. The new plant will double Sarlink’s global capacity and provide the company with a timely expansion as Thermoplastic Vulcanisate (TPV) material solutions are becoming more popular…
Strategies for extracting more distillate from petroleum to meet the growing demand for diesel fuel constituted a major theme of the recent annual meeting of the National Petrochemical and Petroleum Refiners Association (NPRA, Washington D.C.; www.npra.gov) in San Antonio, Tex.…
Cast parts, such as engine blocks, are typically made by pouring molten metal into so-called cores — sand-based molds that have internal passages for the component to be cast. Such casting cores are typically made by reacting sand with organic…