McDermott International Inc. (Houston) announced mechanical completion of a pioneering industrial-scale biosurfactant plant for Evonik Industries AG (Essen, Germany). Less than two years from contract award, Evonik has achieved initial production of Rhamnolipids, a bacterial surfactant with the potential to…
LG Water Solutions, LG Chem’s business unit specializing in water treatment and the manufacturer of NanoH2O reverse osmosis (RO) membranes, has secured a supply order of seawater RO (SWRO) membrane elements through a local EPC for an expansion of a…
BASF SE (Ludwigshafen, Germany) has broken ground on a methyl glycols (MG) plant at its Verbund site in Zhanjiang, China. The new facility is designed with an annual capacity of 46,000 metric tons and aims to meet the rapidly growing…
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The high strength-to-weight ratio and robust mechanical properties of carbon-fiber-reinforced polymers (CFRPs) make them attractive for use in wind-power turbine blades, automobile components, and in airplanes and spacecraft. However, challenges — such as weak interfacial adhesion and poor recyclability —…
In January, specialty materials maker Celanese Corp. (Irving, Tex.; www.celanese.com) beta-launched a remote-operations control room (ROCR) that allows hands-free queries of plant data for faster data gathering and decision-making. The ROCR leverages recent advances in generative-artificial intelligence (gen-AI)-powered natural language…
Researchers at KTH Royal Institute of Technology (Stockholm, Sweden; www.kth.se) have developed a way to decouple the production of hydrogen and oxygen in water electrolysis, thereby reducing the explosion potential of mixing the two gases. The method, described in a…
Plant Watch EuroChem launches phosphate-fertilizer manufacturing complex in Brazil March 14, 2024 — EuroChem Group (Zug, Switzerland; www.eurochemgroup.com) opened a new fertilizer-production facility in Serra do Salitre, Brazil. With a total project investment of nearly $1 billion, the new phosphate…
New designs and materials overcome high temperatures, pressures and aggressive media In the chemical process industries (CPI), standard equipment is often capable of working universally across many applications. However, this same notion does not apply to the sealing elements used…
Batch manufacturing methods are common throughout the chemical process industries (CPI) for specialized compounds and reactions. However, typical batch-wise manufacturing processes are often time-consuming due to large volumes and long loading and unloading times added to the batch processing time,…