In The News
Microbes make a meal of PET
Research groups at Keio University (Hiyoshi; www.bio.keio.ac.jp/labs/kmiyamoto) and Kyoto Institute of Technology, in collaboration with Teijin Ltd. and Adeka Corp., have discovered a bacterium that can degrade and assimilate poly(ethylene terephthalate) (PET), and have clarified the decomposition mechanism. This is…
New Developments Take Shape for U.S. Refiners
Process safety strategies, water use and alkylation technology were among the topics figuring prominently at the 2016 AFPM annual meeting An evolving set of issues facing petroleum refiners in the U.S. figured prominently at the annual meeting of the American…
Cybersecurity: Protecting Your Industrial Control System
A holistic and proactive approach to cybersecurity can help protect your industrial control system from hackers In December 2015, 80,000 homes in the Ukraine were left without power when a cyber attack took down the electrical infrastructure. Investigations suggest that…
Chementator Briefs
Fe-free HTS catalyst Last month at the Nitrogen + Syngas 2016 conference (Berlin, Germany; February 29–March 3), Haldor Topsøe A/S (Lyngby, Denmark; www.topsoe.com) introduced SK-501 Flex, a new high-temperature shift (HTS) catalyst with the unique ability to operate at any…
First commercial-scale gas fermenter in U.S. to break ground
The first commercial-scale, natural-gas-fermentation facility in the U.S. will break ground by the end of 2016, according to Alan Shaw, CEO of Calysta Inc. (Menlo Park, Calif.; www.calysta.com). In a collaboration with agricultural giant Cargill Inc. (Minneapolis, Minn.; www.cargill.com), Calysta…
Making H2 and graphite from methane
Sydney University’s Laboratory for Sustainable Technology (Sydney, Australia; www.sydney.edu.au) and the technology-commercialization-firm Hazer Group (Perth, Australia; www.hazergroup.com.au) are collaborating to scale up the Hazer Process, which uses an iron-ore catalyst to produce hydrogen and graphite from natural gas. Natural gas…
Business News
Plant Watch NET Power breaks ground on clean-power demonstration plant March 10, 2016 — NET Power, LLC (Durham, N.C.; www.netpower.com) has broken ground on a first-of-a-kind 50-MW demonstration power plant in La Porte, Tex. NET Power’s zero-emission Allam Cycle technology burns natural…
Partnership scales up the first ethylene-based metathesis process
A multi-company partnership has achieved the largest-ever use of molybdenum/tungsten (Schrock-type) catalysts for a metathesis process involving ethylene and renewable oils. The reaction run, which produced primarily 1-decene and 9-decenoic acid methyl ester from ethylene and plant oils, represented a…
Optimized version of polymer additive raises PP clarity
Milliken & Co. (Spartanburg, S.C.; www. millikenchemical.com) has optimized its core clarifying technology for polypropylene (PP) resin to raise the clarity level to compete with that of polyethylene terephthalate (PET), polystyrene (PS) and polycarbonate (PC). The optimized technology allows the…
A new catalyst may reduce costs of catalytic converters
Conventional catalytic converters in automobiles are based on heterogeneous catalyst systems with precious metals (such as Pt and Pd), rare earth elements and Ce (in the form of CeO2). However, the cost and limited resources of such metals is driving…