ABB (Zurich, Switzerland; edlinks.chemengonline.com/6899-546) has agreed to sell its Lummus Global business to Chicago Bridge & Iron Company N.V. (CB&I; The Woodlands, Tex.; edlinks.chemengonline.com/6899-547) for an enterprise value of $950 million on a debt and cash free basis, subject to…
Gneuss Kunststofftechnik GmbH (Bad Oeynhausen, Germany; edlinks.chemengonline.com/6899-541) has developed a patented technology that significantly increases the surface exchange of molten polymers during vacuum degassing — a technique used to remove residual water and monomers during polymer processing. Compared with conventional…
ExxonMobil Chemical (Houston, Tex.; edlinks.chemengonline.com/6899-543) has commercialized a new process for making butyl rubber at its Notre Dame de Gravenchon plant in France. The company declines to give details on the process, but says it is more energy-efficient than the…
BASF Corp. (Florham Park, N.J.; edlinks.chemengonline.com/6899-536) and CogniTek Management Systems, Inc. (Northfield, Ill.; edlinks.chemengonline.com/6899-537) have signed a cooperative agreement to study the combined use of supercritical (SC) CO2 and ionic liquids (Ils) as a potentially efficient way to utilize low-temperature…
Blasch Precision Ceramics (Albany, N.Y.; edlinks.chemengonline.com/6899-548) has commercialized one-piece hex-head ferrules made of 99.6% alumina for applications in steam-methane reformers. The high-purity alumina is becoming popular as an alternative to high-grade metal alloys because it is virtually immune to chemical…
BP Alternative Energy (Sunbury, (U.K.; edlinks.chemengonline.com/6899-544) and Powerspan Corp. (Portsmouth, N.H.; edlinks.chemengonline.com/6899-545) are collaborating to develop and commercialize Powerspan’s carbon dioxide capture technology, called ECO2. The agreement covers financial and technical support for pilot demonstration and commercial scaleup activities, including…
Researchers from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s Racah Institute of Physics (Israel; edlinks.chemengonline.com/6899-539) have succeeded in programming polymer sheets to bend and wrinkle by themselves into prescribed structures, such as domes, saddles and sombrero shapes (photo). Their work, described in…
Solvay Solexis, a subsidiary of Solvay S.A. (Brussels, Belgium; edlinks.chemengonline.com/6898-554), and Thin Film Electronics ASA (Oslo, Norway) are cooperating to develop materials for the production of printed electronics devices.The aim of the joint-development program is to optimize ferroelectric-polymer materials to…
Plant Watch Huntsman signs agreement to host new biodiesel plant July 19, 2007 — Huntsman Corp. announced it has reached agreement with RBF Port Neches LLC (“RBF”) to operate a newly constructed biodiesel plant to be located at Huntsman’s…
The traditional way to check microbial growth in a fermentation process is to take a sample of slurry and analyze it in the laboratory, a procedure that is less than ideal because of the time delay in obtaining the information.…