Last month at Filtech (Wiesbaden, Germany; October 13–15), Fil Max Inc. (Brea, Calif.; www.fmxfiltration.com) exhibited a new application for its FMX vortex-generating, membrane-filtration technology — treating wastewater from a biogas plant. Fil Max installed its first commercial system — three…
This month, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd. (MHI; Tokyo; www.mhi.co.jp) is starting up a demonstration plant for producing bioethanol from the straw of rice and wheat. Located at the Futami Farm of MHI Kobe Shipbuilding Plant, the facility — developed in…
A contract for the world’s first commercial transport-gasification facility was awarded to KBR (Houston, www.kbr.com) by Beijing Guoneng Yinghui Clean Energy Engineering Co. for a coal power plant in China’s Guangdong province. The two-phase project will showcase KBR’s transport integrated…
Last month, PAS, Inc. (Houston; www.pas.com) launched Integrity Automation Genome Software, said to be the world’s first software capable of analyzing assets, functionality and dataflow within and among automation and production systems. Integrity provides a universal framework for aggregating and…
Acetonitrile, a byproduct of acrylonitrile production, has been in short supply for about a year because of a dramatic reduction in the demand for acrylonitrile, used in plastics for the manufacture of cars, appliances and electronic goods. A process modification…
Last month, in unveiling the S-Series release of its DeltaV digital automation system, Emerson Process Management (Austin, Tex.; www.emersonprocess.com) introduced electronic marshalling, a new concept in input/output (I/O) configuration that promises to streamline the design and installation of automation systems,…
Rotec Ltd. (Ashkelon, Israel; http://www.rotec-water.com), a technology-transfer company of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGN; Beer-Sheva, Israel), is developing a new desalination technology that promises to increase the water-recovery rate of reverse osmosis (RO) systems from 75–85% up to 95%.…
Process Systems Enterprise Ltd. (PSE; London, U.K.; www.psenterprise.com) is to make new advanced thermodynamic modeling tools for prediction of liquid and gas thermodynamic properties available through its gPROMS process-modeling environment. The technology makes it possible to considerably speed up the…
Foams based on corn starch may one day be substituted for polystyrene foams through technology being developed by the Agricultural Research Service (ARS, Beltsville, Md.; http://www.ars.usda.gov). The ARS Western Regional Research Center (Albany, Calif.) is working on two processes. One…
Retarded polymerization A latent-acid catalyst that can be added to highly reactive pre-polymer resins enabling them to be stored for at least three months prior to controlled polymerization at 120°C has been commercialized by Bac2 (Southampton, U.K.; http://www.bac2.co.uk). Alternative catalysts…