Haldor Topsøe A/S (Lyngby, Denmark; www.topsoe.com) has signed a design contract with an undisclosed client in China for a new plant that will produce substitute natural gas (SNG). When the plant comes on stream in 2011, it will produce close…
Incineration is becoming the only viable method for sewage sludge disposal as landfilling or spreading sludge onto farmland is no longer permitted in some countries. Today, sludge is commonly incinerated in large, centralized incinerators or as an additive in coal-fired…
Last month, a photocatalytic water-cleaning system that removes organic and inorganic contaminants that are difficult to breakdown from wastewater was inaugurated at the German Aerospace Center (DLR; Stuttgart; www.dlr.de) facility in Lampildshausem. The so-called RayWOx system features a new type…
In February 2009, Talvivaara Mining Company Plc. (Espoo, Finland; www.talvivaara.com) delivered its first in a series of commercial shipments of metals to Norilsk Nickel Harjavalta refinery in Finland. Talvivaara expanded the crushing circuit and has restarted the metals precipitation process…
Last month, Nippon Oil Corp. (Tokyo, Japan; www.eneos.co.jp) started production bio-ETBE (ethyl tertiary butyl ether), which will be blended into gasoline as an alternative to ethanol as an oxygenate. Nippon Petroleum Refining Co., a subsidiary of Nippon Oil, inaugurated the…
The power of osmosis Last month, Statkraft (Oslo, Norway; www.statkraft.com) opened what is claimed to be the world's first osmotic power plant. Although the prototype is very small (designed for 10 kW), the company believes data gained from the…
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…