Plant Watch Ineos announces plans to build new PDH plant, increase ethylene capacity June 12, 2017 — Ineos (Rolle, Switzerland; www.ineos.com) announced plans to construct a propane dehydrogenation (PDH) unit in Europe. The plant will produce 750,000 metric tons per…
A new company — Tsubame BHB Co., Ltd. (Tokyo, Japan; www.tsubame-bhb.co.jp) — has been established to commercialize the world’s first on-site production of ammonia for supplying amino-acid synthesis, fermentation materials and fertilizers. The company — a joint venture of Ajinomoto…
Researchers at Princeton University (Princeton, N.J.; www.princeton.edu) have developed a water treatment technique that injects carbon dioxide gas into a stream of water to separate suspended particles that would be difficult to remove by sedimentation or by microbes. The system,…
An overview of how the chemical process industries are looking to the IIoT to help form new business models in a competitive environment Today, technological advances are being made and implemented at an accelerated pace that is quickly changing the…
Predictive process models enable more efficient operations and higher-value products When they hear the words “process modeling,” some may envision an engineer sitting in front of a laptop waiting for a distillation column flowsheet to converge. While flowsheet simulations are…
New motors and drives provide energy efficiency and reliability in chemical applications Always on the lookout for ways to reduce downtime and energy costs, chemical processors are turning to advanced motors and drives to help achieve these goals. Sometimes as…
An international group of researchers, coordinated by the Institute of Solar Research of the German Aerospace Center e.V. (DLR; Cologne, Germany; www.dlr.de), is developing a sulfur-based storage system for solar power. Large-scale chemical storage of solar power and its overnight…
Efficient distillation Last month, Toyo Engineering Corp. (Toyo; Chiba, www.toyo-eng.co.jp) and Koch-Glitsch, LP (Wichita, Kan.; www.koch-glitsch.com) announced a new partnership to distribute Toyo’s energy-saving distillation system, SuperHIDiC, to new global markets in Europe and the Middle East. SuperHIDiC provides energy…
The New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO, Kawasaki City; Japan; www.nedo.go.jp), in partnership with Japan Technological Research Assn. of Artificial Photosynthetic Chemical Process (ARPChem) members, Mitsubishi Chemical Corp. and the Tokyo Institute of Technology, has developed a hyperstable…
Researchers from the Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (Ulsan; www.unist.ac.kr) have found a new way to increase the energy efficiency of metal-air batteries — which are next-generation energy devices — by adding the conducting polymer polypyrrole (pPy). According…