The Linde Engineering Division (Pullach, Germany; www.linde) announced that on-spec ethylene production of the Tasnee ethylene plant in Al-Jubail, Saudi Arabia, was achieved on August 23, 2008 following mechanical completion on July 15, 2008, which is six weeks ahead of…
SAFC Pharma, a focus area within SAFC (www.safcpharma.com), a member of the Sigma-Aldrich Group (St. Louis, Mo.; www.sigma-aldrich.com), today officially announced details of a $30-million expansion plan to its Madison, Wisc., facility, designed to significantly increase its capacity to produce…
Kazakhstan Petrochemical Industries Inc. LLP, in which LyondellBasell (Rotterdam, Netherlands; www.lyondellbasell.com) is holding a minority interest, has selected LyondellBasell’s polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP) technologies for three new plants that will have a combined capacity of 1,300,000 metric tons (m.t.)…
During the course of this year Bayer MaterialScience (BMS; Leverkusen, Germany; www.bayermaterialscience.com) plans to start construction of a state-of-the-art, world-scale facility for producing the polyurethane raw material toluene diisocyanate (TDI) at the integrated production site in Shanghai. The relevant Chinese…
Wassertechnik Essen GmbH, a subsidiary of the Austrian EVN AG, has commissioned Chemieanlagenbau Chemnitz GmbH (CAC; Chemnitz, Germany; www.cac-chem.de) to plan and erect a sodium hypochlorite plant on the basis of chlorine membrane electrolysis. Designed to have an annual capacity…
Siemens’ (Erlangen, Germany; www.siemens.com/energy) coal gasification technology has been selected for Canada’s first low-CO2 IGCC power plant. EPCOR Power Generation is planning to build an integrated gasification combined cycle power plant (IGCC) featuring carbon capture and storage in Genesee near…
Plant Watch Metso to supply mining equipment to Anglo American-MMX in Brazil July 1, 2008 — Metso Minerals will supply crushing, screening and feeding equipment to Anglo American-MMX for its Minas Rio Project located in the Minas Gerais state in…
A process that makes glass by "zapping" the raw materials with a plasma as they fly through the air is being developed by Japanese researchers in a new project led by NEDO (New Energy & Industrial Technology Development Organization; Kawasaki,…
Engineers at MIT (Cambridge, Mass.; www.mit.edu) are developing solar concentrators that have the potential to increase the electrical power output from solar cells by a factor of more than 40. Instead of actually focusing the light, as in systems being…
The production of hydrogen by water splitting promises to become less expensive through a solar-energy process being developed at Penn State University (University Park, Pa.; www.psu.edu). Like other photoelectrochemical methods, the process splits water into its two components, generating O2…