In The News
Haldor Topsøe expands its Frederikssund catalyst plant
Haldor Topsøe A/S (Lyngby, Denmark; www.topsoe.com) officially opened a large extension of the company's catalyst plant in Frederikssund, Denmark. This plant and a plant in Houston, Texas, constitute the company's two primary facilities globally. The extension, representing an investment in…
BASF opens global R&D center in Mumbai
BASF SE (Ludwigshafen, Germany; www.basf.com) today inaugurated a new global Research and Development (R&D) Center at its Thane site in Navi Mumbai, India, focusing on organic synthesis, advanced process and formulation research, discovery chemistry for modern agricultural solutions, and molecular…
ThyssenKrupp Industrial Solutions to build turnkey cement plant in Algeria
ThyssenKrupp Industrial Solutions (Essen, Germany; www.thyssenkrupp-industrial-solutions.com), the ThyssenKrupp Group’s plant engineering specialist, has received an order to build a cement clinker production line in Algeria. The customer is Société des Ciments de Ain El Kebira (SCAEK), a subsidiary of Algerian…
Dow to build new R&D facility in Texas
As part of its ongoing commitment to innovation, The Dow Chemical Company (Midland, Mich.; www.dow.com) announced today that a new research and development (R&D) facility will be built in Lake Jackson, Texas, near its largest manufacturing site in Freeport, Texas.…
WorleyParsons awarded Canadian bitumen-refinery project
WorleyParsons Ltd. (North Sydney, Australia; www.worleyparsons.com) has been appointed to provide detailed engineering and procurement services for the tankfarm, piperack, and flare units of Phase 1 of the North West Redwater Partnership’s greenfield bitumen refinery project, located in Sturgeon County,…
BASF to build world-scale specialty amines plant in Nanjing
BASF SE (Ludwigshafen, Germany; www.basf.com) will build a new world-scale production plant to manufacture specialty amines at its existing wholly-owned site in the Nanjing Chemical Industry Park in China. The plant, which is scheduled to come on stream in late…
Succinity produces first commercial quantities of biobased succinic acid
Succinity GmbH (Düsseldorf, Germany; www.succinity.com), the joint venture between Corbion Purac and BASF for the production and commercialization of biobased succinic acid, has announced the successful start-up of its first commercial production facility. The plant, located at the Corbion Purac…
A new spin on enzymatic reactions
A new process-intensification technology to accelerate the rate of enzymatic reactions has been developed by researchers from the Dept. of Chemical Engineering, University of Bath (U.K.; www.bath.ac.uk). The so-called spinning cloth disc reactor (SCDR) is based on, but extends the…
Commercial debut for a low-cost stationary energy-storage system
A novel battery chemistry that uses a water-based electrolyte has allowed developer Aquion Energy Inc. (Pittsburgh, Pa.; www.aquionenergy.com) to achieve a low-cost and safe battery with long cycle life for stationary energy-storage applications. The Aquion battery technology, now entering its…
In-situ chemical remediation of soil and groundwater
Geo-Cleanse International, Inc. (Mata- wan, N.J.; www.geo-cleanse.com) has developed a new method for ridding soil and groundwater of chloromethanes, Freon and other difficult-to-treat contaminants without the need for digging and offsite soil treatment. The Geo-Cleanse process was inspired by research…