Landfill leachate and other challenging wastewaters incur rising treatment and disposal costs. Technology developed by Heartland Water Technology, Inc. (Hudson, Mass.; www.heartlandtech.com) can lower costs for treating wastewater by slashing wastewater volumes by 95% or more, using waste heat as…
Air Products signs agreement for coal-to-syngas facility in China November 13, 2017 — Air Products (Lehigh Valley, Pa.; www.airproducts.com) and Shaanxi Future Energy Group Co. (SFEC) signed an agreement for a $3.5-billion coal-to-syngas production facility to be built in Yulin…
Significant workforce-related hurdles remain in place for CPI companies, but signs of progress are emerging For the past several years, companies in the chemical process industries (CPI) have been grappling with three consequential workforce issues that have also plagued other…
Trash bags Barrier films used in food packaging are difficult to recycle effectively, because they often contain multiple polymers that are not compatible with one another in the mixing steps required for the recycling process. Now, trash bags made from…
For petroleum refineries, the cost of converting hydrofluoric-acid-based alkylation units to the relatively safer sulfuric-acid-based alkylation process (diagram) has been cost-prohibitive and has lacked specific economic benefits. Now, DuPont (Wilmington, Del.; www.dupont.com) has developed a low-cost approach to converting existing…
Microbes inhabiting the extreme environments thousands of feet below the earth’s surface possess unique properties not encountered elsewhere. A research consortium of South Dakota School of Mines and Technology (SDSMT; Rapid City; www.sdsmt.edu), University of Oklahoma (Norman) and Montana State…
Chemists and engineers from the Performance Materials Segment of Evonik Industries AG (Essen, Germany; www.evonik.com) have developed a new process for making methyl methacrylate (MMA). With a yield of over 90%, the so-called Leading in Methacrylates (LiMA) process can be…
A triple-layer, porous membrane system developed at the Functional Materials Laboratory at Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich (www.fml.ethz.ch) can be fashioned into evaporative curtains to cool and humidify indoor spaces, potentially decreasing the energy demand for climate-control systems. Juxtaposing opposite forces…
NTT Communications Corp. (NTT Com; www.ntt.com) and Mitsui Chemicals Inc. (both Tokyo, Japan; www.mitsuichem.com) have demonstrated the ability to predict, with a high precision, the concentration of gaseous products generated in a furnace. The predictions are produced in just 20…
Both physical security and cybersecurity must be in place to keep chemical facilities safe from attack While almost all businesses in today’s world are concerned with security — both physical security and cybersecurity — chemical processors likely have a deeper…