Technip (Paris, France; www.technip.com) was awarded engineering and procurement contracts by Westlake Chemical Corp. for the expansion and modernization of the ethylene cracking furnaces and the recovery section of Westlake’s ethylene plant in Calvert City, Kentucky. The ethylene production capacity…
Versalis, a global leader in elastomers and a subsidiary of Eni s.p.A. (Milan, Italy; www.eni.com), and Yulex Corp. (Phoenix, Ariz.; www.yulex.com) an agricultural-based biomaterials company, announced today they are forming a strategic partnership to manufacture guayule-based biorubber materials and will…
Bechtel (Houston; www.bechtel.com) announced today the Bechtel Pueblo Team (BPT) has completed construction of the Pueblo Chemical Agent-Destruction Pilot Plant (PCAPP). The facility will eventually destroy 2,611 tons of mustard agent-filled munitions currently being stored at the U.S. Army Pueblo…
Lanxess AG (Leverkusen, Germany; www.lanxess.com) is expanding its global production network for inorganic pigments in China. A new high-tech facility for premium iron-oxide red pigments is being constructed at the Ningbo Chemical Park on the Chinese East Coast. The plant,…
Described by the U.S. Dept. of Energy (DOE; Washington, D.C.; www.energy.gov) as a milestone in DOE’s Industrial Carbon Capture and Storage (ICCS) program, Air Products (Lehigh Valley, Pa.; www.airproducts.com) announced today that Phase One of its two-stage carbon-capture project in…
Bechtel (Houston; www.bechtel.com) has purchased Chevron’s Waste Water Treatment (WWT) Process, a technology that improves the efficiency of petroleum refineries. The WWT Process is a proprietary, two-stage sour-water-stripping process that separates ammonia and hydrogen sulfide streams from sour waters generated…
The largest privately managed industrial gas specialist, Messer Group GmbH (Bad Soden, Germany; www.messergroup.de) and Sichuan Meifeng, a Chinese chemicals company, have signed a joint-venture (JV) agreement to found Sichuan Meifeng Messer Gas Products. The JV will invest some €7.24…
Eastman Chemical Co. (Kingsport, Tenn.; www.eastman.com) announced today a debottleneck of butyric acid production capacity at its Kingsport, Tennessee, facility. The debottleneck, scheduled for completion in the fourth quarter of 2013, will add an additional 11 million pounds of capacity…
The monthly Chemical Activity Barometer (CAB), from the American Chemistry Council (ACC; Washington, D.C.; www.americanchemistry.com), rose in January by 0.8 percentage points, the sixth consecutive month that the leading macroeconomic indicator has increased. The CAB for December 2012 was revised…
Lanxess AG (Leverkusen, Germany; www.lanxess.com) has increased its dichlorobenzene capacity by more than 15%. It has done so by installing an additional crystallizer at the Leverkusen site, thereby enabling it to produce more high-purity p-dichlorobenzene for the global market. Some…