In The News
BASF and Yara plan to build ammonia plant in Freeport
BASF SE (Ludwigshafen, Germany; www.basf.com) and Yara (Osöo, Norway; www.yara.com) have made good progress with their plan to jointly build a world-scale ammonia plant on the U.S. Gulf Coast. The proposed plant would be located at the existing BASF site…
BASF and Sinopec to build a new NPG-production plant in Nanjing
BASF SE (Ludwogshafen, Germany; www.basf.com) and Sinopec (Beijing, China; www.sinopec.com) will build a new world-scale production plant for Neopentylglycol (NPG) at their state- of-the-art Verbund site, BASF-YPC Co., a 50-50 joint venture in Nanjing, China. The plant, with a total…
Air Products technology supplies gases for glass factory in Czech Republic
Air Products (Lehigh Valley, Pa.; www.airproducts.com) has recently installed an air separation unit (ASU) for AGC Glass Europe, the world’s largest producer of flat glass. The state-of-the-art cryogenic Prism ON300 plant, now successfully operating at AGC’s Teplice factory in the…
BASF evaluates natural gas-based investment in the U.S.
BASF SE (Ludwigshafen, Germany; www.basf.com) is evaluating an investment in a world-scale methane-to-propylene complex on the U.S. Gulf Coast. The on-purpose production of propylene to supply the company’s North American operations would allow BASF to take advantage of low gas…
Demonstration of a new CO2-methanation process
The first phase of a study on the feasibility of producing methane from CO2 has been completed by Hitachi Zosen Corp. (Tokyo; www.hitachizosen.co.jp) and Daiki Ataka Engineering Co. (Daiki Ataka) a subsidy of Hitachi Zosen, in collaboration with PTT Exploring…
The launch of a new bioethylene-production process
Last month, a new bioethanol-dehydration process was introduced by its developers Axens (www.axens.net), IFP Energies Nouvelles (IFPEN; both Rueil-Malmaison, France; www.ifpen.fr) and Total Refining & Chemicals (Brussels, Belgium; www.totalrefiningchemicals.com). Tradenamed Atol, the process is said to be the most profitable…
Covered lagoons treat wastewater and make biogas, too
The world’s first installation of the so-called Cohral technology — deploying a covered lagoon for anaerobic wastewater treatment — was completed last March at Oakey Abattoir Pty Ltd. in the farming region of Darling Downs, in southern Queensland, Australia. The…
May Chementator Briefs
Carbon nanofibers Researchers at North Carolina State University (Raleigh, N.C.; www.ncsu.edu), in conjunction with the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (Oak Ridge, Tenn.; www.ornl.gov) have produced, via a plasma-enhanced vapor deposition process, vertically aligned carbon nanofibers using an acetone and…
New mass spec technique requires no sample preparation
A research group at Stevens Institute of Technology (Hoboken, N.J.; www.stevens.edu) has developed a new mass spectroscopy technique, called helium-plasma-ionization mass spectrometry (HePI-MS), that enables direct sampling of materials without the need for rigorous sample preparation, as is required for…
Borealis invests in capacity expansion for crosslinked polyethylene, and more business news
Plant Watch Lanxess inaugurates new high-tech plastics plant in Brazil April 10, 2014 — Lanxess AG (Cologne, Germany; www.lanxess.com) inaugurated its new high-tech plastics plant in Porto Feliz, Brazil. The company has invested around €20 million in the facility, which…