January Chementator Briefs

Bioethanol Last month, an energy-saving plant for producing bioethanol started up in Norrköping, Sweden, for Lantmännen Agroetanol AB. When operating at full capacity, the plant will produce 470,000 L/d of bioethanol from grain (mostly wheat), making it the largest bioethanol facility in Northern Europe. The plant is based on the Multipressure system of Vogelbusch GmbH (Vienna, Austria; www.vogelbusch.com). The Multipressure system uses several distillation columns operating at different steam pressures, which results in a "significant" reduction in steam consumption — over 50% less than conventional technology, says Vogelbusch. Additional energy savings are achieved through optimal thermal integration of the distillation and dehydration processes. Photolithography Last month, Sumitomo Chemical Co. Ltd. (Tokyo, Japan; www.sumitomo-chem.co.jp) started up a $120-million plant for producing argon-fluoride (ArF) liquid immersion (LI) semiconductor resist at its Osaka factory. The facility has a production capacity of 100,000 gal/yr, which the company says will give it one third of the global market share — two thirds of which is in Asia — for ArF LI resists, which are use in ArF excimer-laser…