In The News
Wacker plans polysilicon production facility in U.S.
Wacker Chemie AG (Munich, Germany; www.wacker.com) has mid-term plans to construct a new hyperpure polycrystalline silicon facility in the U.S. and has purchased land in Tennessee for this purpose. The land in Bradley County covers approximately 550 acres (220 hectares),…
Axens technology for Kremenchug refinery
The Ukrainian based holding company Ukrtatnafta (www.ukrtatnafta.com), has awarded Axens (Rueil-Malmaison, France; www.axens.net) a contract for upgrading the gasoline pool at the Kremenchug refinery, which is the largest throughput capacity refinery in the Ukraine. The upgrading project is the first…
BASF launches 2-propylheptyl acrylate
BASF SE (Ludwigshafen, Germany; www.basf.com) is systematically expanding its portfolio of specialty monomers and launching its new product, 2-propylheptyl acrylate (2-PHA), on the market. This is a new raw material and building block for functional polymers. 2-PHA belongs to the…
Endress+Hauser sets up new company in Qatar
In the future Endress+Hauser (Reinach, Switzerland; www.endress.com) will support its customers in the Emirate of Qatar with their own distribution and service company. Endress+Hauser (Qatar) L.L.C. has opened for business early this month. The Persian Gulf region is experiencing enormous…
New coke plant for POSCO in South Korea
POSCO Group (Seoul, South Korea), the worlds’s fourth biggest steel producer, has commissioned Uhde GmbH (Dortmund, Germany; www.uhde.biz) to provide extensive services for the construction of four new coke-oven batteries to expand its coke production by more than 2.3 million…
Chementator: A pilot-step closer to second-generation biofuels
Lurgi GmbH (Frankfurt, Germany; www.lurgi.com) is building a pilot plant to demonstrate the viability of its three-stage bioliq process for producing liquid fuels from biomass. The pilot plant — an entrained-flow gasifier for the production of synthesis gas — will…
Chementator: Progress on a promising separation technology
For separating two components with similar volatilities, extractive distillation is typically used, whereby a high-boiling, non-volatile solvent is added to "break the azeotrope" — a process that is both energy intensive and often involves the use of hazardous solvents. In…
Chementator: Sonicating slurries speeds soil remediation
Ultrasound has been applied, with limited success, for the remediation of contaminated soil. Up to now, the approach has been to first extract the contaminant from the soil into a liquid, which is then passed through a sono-reactor where the…
Chementator: A sound way to reuse low-temperature waste heat
In a so-called thermoacoustic engine, researchers from the Energy Research Center of the Netherlands (ECN; Petten, Netherlands; www.ecn.nl) have achieved a record efficiency in the conversion of heat to sound, improving the existing record of 41% to 48% of the…
Chementator: Commercialization nears for producing cartenoids from engineered yeasts
In late 2009, Microbia PE, Inc. (Lexington, Mass.; www.microbia-pe.com) will begin commercialization of its initial carotenoid products. Microbia plans to produce β-carotene, astaxanthin, zeaxanthin, cathaxanthin and lutein — all five carotenoid products that currently have significant commercial value. These carotenoids…