Lanxess AG (Leverkusen, Germany; www.lanxess.com) is to expand its site in Antwerp with capital expenditures amounting to some 35-million euros. The plan is to raise the capacity of the caprolactam production plant in the port of Antwerp by 10% by…
Today, Repsol's (Madrid, Spain; www.repsolypf.com) CEO, Antonio Brufau, Portugal’s Prime Minister, and Minister of Economy José Socrates and Manuel Pinho, have announced the initiation of the Sines Petrochemical Complex expansion project. This important project is one of company's main worldwide…
Outotec Oyj (Espoo, Finland; www.outotec.com) has won an order from Steel Authority of India Ltd (SAIL) for the design and delivery of an iron-ore sinter plant for SAIL’s Rourkela Steel Plant in Orissa. Outotec will implement the turnkey plant project…
A microbial process originally designed to remediate soils contaminated with hydrocarbons has accelerated the recovery of bitumen from oil sands fivefold in bench-scale tests conducted at Savannah River National Laboratory (SRNL, South Carolina; srnl.doe.gov). The heart of the process is…
BASF SE (Ludwigshafen, Germany; www.basf.com) plans to acquire Ciba Holding AG (Basel, Switzerland), a leading specialty chemical company, and will make a public takeover offer to Ciba’s shareholders. BASF will pay CHF 50.00 in cash for each nominal share in…
Fluorite, the natural mineral of calcium fluoride, is a key feedstock for making fluorochemicals. In Japan, however, the cost and availability of fluorite has become problematic due to recent restrictions on its import from China. To alleviate the problem, Organo…
Last month, AE Biofuels (Cupertino, Calif.; www.aebiofuels.com) opened an integrated cellulose-and-starch ethanol demonstration facility in Butte, Mont. If operated at full capacity, the plant could produce 150,000 gal/yr of ethanol. The plant uses ambient-temperature cellulose-starch-hydrolysis (ATCSH) enzyme technology to optimize…
Controlling particle size is critical in alumina processing, especially when alumina crystals are precipitated from Bayer liquor — a highly caustic solution where bauxite is dissolved to produce alumina. The ability to control the conditions of the precipitation process through…
Verenium Corp. (Cambridge, Mass.; www.verenium.com) and BP p.l.c. (London; www.bp.com) have formed a partnership to accelerate the development and commercialization of Verenium’s technology for producing ethanol from cellulosic feedstocks such as sugarcane bagasse, switchgrass, rice straw and wood chips. In…
Metabolix, Inc. (Cambridge, Mass.; www.metabolix.com) has demonstrated, in recently completed greenhouse trials, that switchgrass plants engineered using the firm’s multi-gene expression technology produced significant amounts polyhydroxybutyrate (a polyhydroxyalkanoate; PHA) bioplastics in leaf tissues. The result is said to be the…