Construction of a 1-hectare (ha) carbon-capture and recycling “synthesizer” demonstration plant has started at Tarong Power Station near the town of Nanango in southeast Queensland, Australia. Tarong Power Station comprises four coal-fired units with a gross generating capacity of 1,400…
Biobutanol milestones Last month, Cobalt Technologies (Cobalt; Mountain View, Calif.; www.cobalttech.com) announced two achievements toward commercial-scale production of bio-based n -butanol: the demonstration of its biomass pretreatment process, and the demonstration of its advanced-strain fermentation process. In cooperation with…
Invensys Operations Management (IOM; Plano, Tex.; iom.invensys.com), a division of Invensys, has expanded its certification for virtualization technology, making its industrial automation systems the first to be certified for high availability, disaster recovery and fault tolerance in supervisory control applications…
New biocomposite plastics that combine soybean-meal protein with conventional plastic resins allow significantly lower use of petroleum-based chemicals in polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP) manufacturing. The new class of bioplastics incorporates soybean-meal protein, which is chemically bound to the PE…
A Samsung petrochemicals facility in South Korea will be the first to feature a suite of energy efficiency technologies developed by UOP LLC (Des Plaines, Ill., www.uop.com) for improved aromatics production. A number of UOP aromatics-processing design features and materials…
A new process for generating sheets of polyethylene terephthalate (PET) eliminates several production steps used in the traditional process, offering greatly reduced energy use and improved polymer properties. Developed by Octal Petrochemicals LLC FZC (Muscat, Oman; www.octal.com), the direct-to-sheet PET…
A carbothermal process for obtaining magnesium — developed by CSIRO (www.csiro.au) Light Metals Flagship (South Clayton, Victoria, Australia) — overcomes previous limitations to commercial viability. For several years, magnesium has been produced mainly by electrolytic routes, from magnesium chloride sources…
The first commercial-scale biobutanol plant using the Gevo Integrated Fermentation Technology (GIFT) process is set to come online in mid-2012 at the former site of an ethanol facility in Minnesota. In late January, Gevo (Englewood, Colo.; www.gevo.com) was awarded a…
The first commercial-scale biobutanol plant using the Gevo Integrated Fermentation Technology (GIFT) process is set to come online in mid-2012 at the former site of an ethanol facility in Minnesota. In late January, Gevo (Englewood, Colo.; www.gevo.com) was awarded a…
A new catalyst design, in which gallium atoms are integrated into the zeolite catalyst structure, can increase yields of aromatic compounds from biomass by 40% in a catalytic fast-pyrolysis process. The higher yields of benzene, toluene and xylenes (BTX), as…