James R. Fair October 14, 1920 – October 11, 2010 Longtime readers of this magazine will be saddened to learn that on October 11, Dr. James Fair passed away at the age of 90. At…
BASF SE (Ludwigshafen, Germany; www.basf.com) and Ineos Industries Holdings Limited (Lyndhurst, U.K.; www.ineos.com) have announced their intention to combine their global business activities in styrene monomers (SM), polystyrene (PS), acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS), styrene-butadiene block copolymers (SBC) and other styrene-based…
ABB (Zurich, Switzerland; www.abb.com) and Baldor Electric Co. (Fort Smith, Ark.) have agreed that ABB will acquire Baldor in an all-cash transaction valued at approximately $4.2 billion, including $1.1 billion of net debt. Under the terms of the definitive agreement,…
Lummus Technology (The Woodlands, Tex.), a CB&I company (www.cbi.com), has been awarded a contract by Liaoning Tongyi Petrochemical Co. for the license and engineering design of grassroots OCT olefins-conversion units and Catofin dehydrogenation units at several of its sites in…
The Dow Chemical Company (Midland, Mich.; www.dow.com) has increased its monopropylene glycol (MPG) capacity by 15%, an additional 35,000 ton/yr, in the Stade, Germany plant after completion of an advanced energy improvement and technology optimization project. “The investment in our…
BASF SE (Ludwigshafen, Germany; www.basf.com) has signed a purchase agreement to acquire the styrene catalysts business of CRI/Criterion (Houston; www.cricatalyst.com), a wholly owned subsidiary of Shell. Financial details of the transaction are not being disclosed. CRI/Criterion is a leading global…
Pointwise, Inc. (Fort Worth, Tex.; www.pointwise.com) announces the latest release of its Pointwise computational fluid dynamics (CFD) meshing software with a wide ranging set of new tools. The surface meshing formulation of the T-Rex (anisotropic tetrahedral extrusion) hybrid-meshing algorithm, first…
ABB (Baden, Switzerland; www.abb.com) and Holcim Switzerland have agreed to install ABB’s newly developed heat recovery and electrical power production system at Holcim’s cement plant in Untervaz, Switzerland. ABB’s state-of-the-art solution is based on the ORC (organic Rankine cycle) technology…
Süd-Chemie AG (www.sud-chemie.com) and the Technical University of Munich (both Munich, Germany; www.tum.de) have formed a strategic alliance for catalysis research. In addition to basic research in the field of catalysis, a major aspect of this co-operation will be the…
Recognizing that oil exploration increasingly involves reservoir fluids at pressures and temperatures not previously encountered, Cambridge Viscosity (Medford, Mass.; www.cambridgeviscosity.com) and Schlumberger (www.slb.com) have formed a collaborative effort to define and develop viscosity standards appropriate for these new conditions. The…