Fluor Corp. (Irving, Tex.; www.fluor.com) has started construction activities on a new delayed coker unit for ExxonMobil Petroleum & Chemical BVBA (ExxonMobil) at its Antwerp, Belgian petroleum refinery. Construction on the project, which will expand the refinery’s production capabilities, formally…
UOP LLC (Des Plaines, Ill; www.uop.com), a Honeywell company, says that UOP C3 Oleflex process technology started up and has been successfully operating in Russia, producing high-quality propylene to help meet the global supply shortage of the valuable plastics building…
Johnson Matthey (London; www.matthey.com) has agreed to divest its Gold and Silver Refining business to Asahi Holdings Inc., a collector, refiner and recycler of precious and rare metals from waste materials, for £118 million ($186 million) in cash, subject to…
The American Chemical Society (ACS; Washington D.C.; www.acs.org) Board of Directors has named Thomas M. Connelly, Jr., Ph.D., executive vice president and chief innovation officer at DuPont, the Society’s next executive director and chief executive officer (CEO), effective February 17,…
Solvay S.A. (Brussels, Belgium; www.solvay.com) is increasing resin production capacity at its plant in Panoli, Gujarat state in India, by 25% to support strong demand for its innovative ultra-high performance polymers KetaSpire and AvaSpire. Solvay's Global Business Unit Specialty Polymers…
BioAmber Inc. (Montreal, Canada; www.bio-amber.com), an industrial biotechnology company producing sustainable chemicals, has signed an exclusive supply agreement for bio-based succinic acid with Oleon. Under the terms of the 5-year contract, which runs from 2014 to the end of 2018,…
The Capitol SkyMine project in San Antonio, Tex. utilizes fluegas from an existing cement plant to manufacture salable chemicals while preventing the CO2 from reaching the atmosphere. Built by Skyonic Corp. (Austin, Tex.; www.skyonic.com), the project is said to be…
Significant improvements to a process to extract vanadium, titanium and iron from the Mount Peake Vanadium-Titanium-Iron Project in the Northern Territory of Australia will be tested in a pilot plant now under construction and nearing completion. Results of the pilot-plant…
Protective-enclosure maker Intertec Inc. (Sarnia, Ont.; www.intertec.info) is building a unique, explosion-proof, pressurized shelter for a granulated urea warehouse at what will be the world’s largest, single-stream, gas-to-urea plant in Nigeria. The three-section enclosure protects personnel and electronics from potentially…
New techniques and equipment for manufacturing cast components made from beryllium-aluminum alloys can reduce the cost significantly, allowing the high-performance materials to be considered for a wide range of applications beyond their initial uses in the aerospace industry. Beryllium-aluminum alloys…