CNOOC (China National Oil and Off-shore Corp.) has awarded Haldor Topsøe A/S (Lyngby, Denmark; www.topsoe.com) a contract for converting coke oven gas with extra CO2 into substitute natural gas (SNG) and Liquifed natural gas (LNG). At the end of 2011…
UOP LLC (Des Plaines, Ill.; www.uop.com), a Honeywell company, has established a new business unit dedicated to natural gas processing solutions and hydrogen. The new Natural Gas and Hydrogen business unit will increase Honeywell UOP’s focus on developing technology, equipment and…
DuPont (Wilmington, Del.; www.dupont.com) and NexSteppe (Malibu, Calif.; www.nexsteppe.com) have entered into a collaboration to develop advanced feedstocks for biofuels, biopower and biobased products. The collaboration will focus on the development of new sweet sorghum and high biomass sorghum hybrids,…
BASF SE (Ludwigshafen, Germany; www.basf.com) is participating with $30 million through BASF Biorenewable Beteiligungs GmbH & Co. KG in the American technology firm Renmatix Inc. (King of Prussia, Pa.; www.renmatix.com). The BASF subsidiary led a $50 million financing round, joined…
January 1, 2012 marked the launch of the new TU Delft Process Technology Institute. All Delft University of Technology (TU Delft; the Netherlands; www.tudelft.nl) research in the field of process technology will be integrated in this institute. “What makes this…
As we round the corner from 2011 to 2012, economists are painting dimming pictures for global economic recovery. For instance, a report from IHS (Lexington, Mass.; www.ihs.com) chief economist Nariman Behravesh says, “World growth will slow in 2012 — the…
Forsthoffer’s Best Practice Handbook for Rotating Machinery. By William Forsthoffer. Elsevier Inc., 30 Corporate Drive, 4th floor, Burlington, MA. Web: elsevierdirect.com. 2011. 672 pages. $295.00. Update on Silica-based…
In professional life, the influences that teach us, inspire us and drive us to succeed tend to come more from individuals than corporations. If you would like to bring recognition to someone whose excellence in chemical engineering you admire, consider…
[The following originally appeared in the January 2012 Letters page] The Chemical Engineer ( tce) for the past two years has run a series of articles in which it profiles some of the most interesting chemical engineers. At the end…
Mechanical integrity is an essential consideration in heat exchanger design. The most common threat to this integrity is tube bundle vibration. So, the computer programs used for heat exchanger design incorporate procedures that assess this threat. However, such analysis is…