In The News
Business News August 2017
Plant Watch Arkema invests in capacity expansion for biosourced polyamide 11 July 12, 2017 — Arkema (Colombes, France; www.arkema.com) plans to invest around €300 million over five years in the biosourced polyamide 11 chain, building a new production plant in…
Chementator briefs
Desalination Recently, Formosa Petrochemical Corp. (FPCC; Mailiao, Taiwan; www.fpcc.com.tw) commissioned IDE Technologies (Kadima, Israel; www.ide-tech.com) to build a desalination plant in Yunlin County, Taiwan that will be the first large-scale application for IDE’s high-purity boron-removal process. The three-step process combines…
A probe that tests galvanizing kettles at high temperatures
To provide corrosion protection and long life, steel products are galvanized by immersion into kettles containing molten zinc. These galvanizing kettles need to be checked periodically to monitor rates of corrosion in order to avoid a catastrophic spillage of molten…
A new zeolite catalyst promises to significantly improve naphtha cracking
Chiyoda Corp. (Yokohama, www.chiyoda-corp.com) has been working on a new naphtha cracking process with the aim of producing more propylene and consuming less energy than existing naphtha thermal-cracking methods. The company has recently developed a new catalyst based on iron-…
A ‘greener’ more sustainable route to trimethylgallium
Last month, the Precious Metals Chemistry business unit of Umicore AG & Co. KG (Hanau-Wolfgang, Germany; www.pmc.umicore.com) inaugurated its production unit for making trimethylgallium (TMGa) and triethylgallium (TEGa). The new facility uses a new, patented production process to make these…
A new catalyst for making methane from CO2 and H2
The Sabatier reaction, in which H2 and CO2 react at temperatures of 300–400°C in the presence of a nickel catalyst, or an alumina-supported ruthenium catalyst, is one way to reduce CO2 into methane. Until now, however, it has been difficult…
Make more from biomass with iron
Nippon Shokubai Co. (Osaka and Tokyo, Japan; www.shokubai.co.jp) has jointly developed a new process for biomass utilization in collaboration with professor Yuichi Kita at Kobe University (www.kobe-u.ac.jp). The process is highly efficient for decomposing lignocellulose into a group of water-soluble…
CO2-Capture Technologies Aim to Cut Costs
Despite cost hurdles, CO2-capture technologies continue to advance, driven by the critical role of CO 2 capture in achieving emissions-reduction goals Among the possible strategies for addressing climate change risks are CO2-removal approaches, including the capture of CO2 from large…
New process generates salable products from Marcellus produced water
Produced water from natural gas wells in the Marcellus Shale Deposit is extremely high in total dissolved solids (TDS; levels of 25–35% TDS are common) and barium, making the water difficult to re-use and requiring injection in underground geologic formations.…
Bringing Increased Reliability and Safety to Control Valves
Hardware improvements and service programs add more value to today’s control valves Chemical processors demand reliability, safety and efficiency when selecting control valves. As a result, there have been significant advances to the equipment, including the use of better materials…