In order to shift the country’s energy base from petroleum, the Indonesian government has implemented a policy aimed at shifting to coal. Because low-rank coal (LRC) accounts for about 80% of the nation’s coal resources, effective utilization of these reserves…
BASF SE (Ludwigshafen, Germany; www.basf.com) has developed an industrially viable process for synthesizing metal organic frameworks (MOFs), and plans to scaleup the process within the next two years. MOFs are crystalline compounds consisting of metal ions or clusters coordinated to…
Construction has started in Qinzhou, China, on the first commercial plant to use a new process for producing fuels from oil shale, to be imported from Indonesia. The process was developed by China Chemical Economical Cooperation Center (CCECC) and AuraSource,…
A combined coal-gasification and methane-reforming process using coal char as catalyst has been developed by a team from the Chinese Academy of Sciences [Qingdao Institute of Bioenergy & Bioprocess Technology (english.qibebt.cas.cn), and the Institute of Coal Chemistry (english.sxicc.cas.cn)] and from…
A hydrometallurgical process for nickel laterite deposits — believed to be the only process capable of treating any laterite deposits, from limonitic to saprolitic ores, in a single flowsheet — has been developed by Direct Nickel Pty. Ltd. (DNi; Sydney,…
Evonik Industries’ business unit Performance Polymers (www.evonik.com) is planning to construct a new plant for the production of methyl methacrylate (MMA) monomer, using its newly developed proprietary Aveneer process. When the plant starts up in 2014, it will produce 150,000–200,000…
A new SM process Exelus Inc. (Livingston, N.J.; www.exelusinc.com) received a $500,000 grant from the U.S. Dept. of Energy (DOE; Washington, D.C.) to help pilot the company’s styrene monomer (SM) process ( CE, January 2007, p. 13). The funds are…
Enerkem Inc. (Montreal, Can-ada; www.enerkem.com) has broken ground in Edmonton, Alberta, on what is said to be the world’s first industrial-scale plant to produce liquid fuel from municipal solid waste. When the plant starts up at the end of 2011,…
Plastic derived from corn, used mostly for bottles and cups, costs about 20% more than petroleum-based plastics, but has two desirable qualities: it comes from a renewable resource and is biodegradable. However, the use of the plastic — polylactic acid…
Graphene Laboratories Inc. (Reading, Mass.; www.graphenelab.com) and CVD Equipment Corp. (Ronkonkoma, N.Y.; www.cvdequipment.com) recently announced the commercial launch of single-layer graphene films, marketed as CVDGraphene, grown by a chemical vapor deposition (CVD) process. Using slightly modified CVD equipment that has…