In The News
Green honors
In June, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agancy (EPA; Washington, D.C.; www.epa.gov) announced the winners of the 2009 Presidential Green Chemistry Challenge Awards. Winners of the Challenge, which promotes R&D of less hazardous alternatives to existing technologies that reduce or eliminate…
Making SunCatchers instead of cars
Stirling Energy Systems (SES; Phoenix, Ariz.; www.stirlingenergy.com) and Tessera Solar (Houston; www.tesserasolar.com) recently unveiled four, newly designed solar-power collection dishes at Sandia National Laboratories’ National Solar Thermal Test Facility (Albuquerque, N.M.). The refined design of SunCatchers will be used in…
Capacity to double for an oil-shale process
Outotec GmbH (Oberursel, Germany), a 100% daughter company of Outotec Oy (Helsinki, Finland; www.outotec.com) has received a €109-million contract for the design, delivery, construction and commissioning of a new oil-shale processing plant to be built in Narva, Estonia for Eesti…
An alternative to chlor-alkali
Earlier this year, NSR Technologies (Decatur, Ill.; www.nsr-tech.com) commercialized its patented process for producing potassium hydroxide (45–50 wt.%) and dilute hydrochloric acid via a membrane separations technology. The company’s flagship production facility in Decatur, Ill. is the first commercial application…
A replacement for Cr+6
Aculon, Inc. (San Diego, Calif.; www.aculon.com) has developed a formulation of its proprietary SAMP technology (Self-Assembled Monolayer of Phosphate) that can be used as an alternative to hexavalent chromium used in primers and conversion coatings to increase the adhesion of…
Chementator briefs for August
Bioplastics DSM Engineering Plastics (Sittard, Netherlands; www.dsm.com) has introduced EcoPaXX, a biobased, high-performance engineering plastic that is said to have a zero carbon footprint (100% carbon neutral from cradle to grave). Approximately 70% of EcoPaXX is made from building blocks…
DSM to sell urea-licensing business to Maire Tecnimont
Royal DSM N.V. (Heerlen, Netherlands; www.dsm.com) and Maire Tecnimont S.p.A. (Rome, Italy; www.mairetecnimont.it) announce today that they have reached an agreement for the sale of DSM’s urea-licensing subsidiary Stamicarbon B.V. to Maire Tecnimont for a total consideration of 38-million euros…
BASF extends joint R&D program with IMEC
BASF SE (Ludwigshafen, Germany; www.basf.com) and IMEC (Leuven, Belgium; www2.imec.be), Europe's leading independent nanoelectronics research center, have announced today that they are extending their joint development program. The process chemicals which the two partners plan to develop as part of…
GEA builds automatic dairy plant in Chile
The Process Technology Segment of GEA Group AG (Bochum, Germany; www.geagroup.com) has received an order for about 9-million euros from Nestlé to build the liquid processing part of a Growing-Up Milk plant in Chile. The new plant will be located…
Agilent acquires Varian for $1.5 billion
Agilent Technologies, Inc. (Santa Clara, Calif.; www.agilent.com) and Varian, Inc. (Palo Alto, Calif.; www.varianinc.com) have signed a definitive agreement for the acquisition by Agilent of Varian, a leading worldwide supplier of scientific instrumentation and associated consumables for life science and…