The Dow Chemical Company (Midland, Mich.; www.dow.com) has announced that its joint venture membrane chlor-alkali facility with Mitsui & Co., Ltd (Tokyo; www.mitsui.com) has successfully initiated full-scale, commercial production. Dow’s share of the chlorine produced at the Dow-Mitsui Chlor-Alkali Freeport,…
Celanese Corp. (Irving, Tex.; www.celanese.com) has announced its intent to explore plans to construct a methanol production unit at the company’s Bishop, Tex., facility. Celanese is preparing to apply for the necessary environmental construction permits for a methanol unit…
Chevron Phillips Chemical Co. LLC (The Woodlands, Tex.; www.cpchem.com) has announces that its wholly-owned affiliate, Chevron Phillips Chemicals International N.V. is expanding its Tessenderlo, Belgium facility. The expansion includes an on-purpose hydrogen sulfide (H2S) unit and additional sulfur-based products capacity.…
Asahi Kasei Chemicals (Tokyo, Japan; www.asahi-kasei.co.jp) held an opening ceremony celebrating the construction of a new acetonitrile plant in Tongsuh Petrochemical’s plant grounds in Ulsan, Korea, which started up operations in January 2014. Acetonitrile is mainly used as a…
ExxonMobil Chemical Co. (Houston; www.exxonmobilchemical.com) has announced the opening of its world-scale manufacturing facility that will enable the company to produce up to 50,000 tons per year of SpectraSyn Elite metallocene polyalphaolefin (mPAO) synthetic lubricant base stocks at its integrated…
Solvay S.A. (Brussels, Belgium; www.solvay.com) has completed the acquisition of U.S.-based Plextronics Inc. to bolster its Organic Light Emitting Diodes (OLED) electronic display technology and launch a new development platform with a strong Asian foothold. With Plextronics, Solvay is expanding its know-how in emerging applications such as…
Invista (Wichita, Kan.; www.invista.com) broke ground on new hexamethylene diamine (HMD) and nylon 6,6 polymer plants at the Shanghai Chemical Industry Park in China. These facilities mark a key milestone in Invista’s plans for integrated nylon 6,6 facilities in the…
Chevron Phillips Chemical Co. (The Woodlands, Tex.; www.cpchem.com) and the chemicals division of Repsol S.A. (Madrid, Spain; www.repsol.com) have announced that Repsol has entered into an agreement to license Chevron Phillips Chemical’s proprietary technology for production of metallocene-based polyethylene (PE)…
Oxea GmbH (Oberhausen, Germany; www.oxea-chemicals.com) is planning to increase its European capacity for Oxsoft GPO (Dioctyl Terephthalate - DOTP) by 50,000 metric tons per year (m.t./yr) by the fourth quarter of 2015. To this end, Oxea has signed a memorandum…
Oxea GmbH (Oberhausen, Germany; www.oxea-chemicals.com) has started basic engineering for a 2-ethylhexanol (2-EH) and a propanol unit at its world-scale production plant in Bay City, Tex. Both units are scheduled to come onstream in late 2016. Key elements of the…