Teijin Frontier Co. (www2.teijin-frontier.com) — the Teijin Group's (Tokyo, Japan; www.teijin.com) fiber-products converting company — announced today that it will establish Teijin Frontier Myanmar Co., Ltd. in Yangon, Myanmar, on October 1 to strengthen Teijin Frontier’s overseas operations and also…
Outotec Oyj (Espoo, Finland; www.outotec.com) and Hatch Ltd. (Mississauga, Ont., Canada; www.hatch.ca), as an unincorporated joint venture, have been awarded a contract by Mubadala and Dubai Aluminium (DUBAL) for the provision of a technology license as well as the basic…
The State Oil Company of Azerbaijan (SOCAR) has decided to build the country’s first combined ammonia-urea complex 30 km north of Azerbaijan’s capital Baku. The plant is going to play a very important role for the economy of Azerbaijan in…
Clariant (Muttenz, Switzerland; www.clariant.com) has received the International Sustainability & Carbon Certification (ISCC) for its sunliquid demonstration plant in Straubing, Germany, which was opened in July 2012. The certificate confirms that the cellulosic ethanol from agricultural residues produced with the…
Saudi Hydrogen Peroxide Co., a newly created joint venture (JV) between Sadara Chemical Co. (Sadara; Jubail Industrial City; Saudi Arabia) and the Solvay Group (Brussels, Belgium; www.solvay.com), announced today that they have begun constructing one of the world's largest hydrogen…
Researchers from the U.S. Dept. of Energys Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI; Emeryville, Calif.; www.jbei.org) have reported the first demonstration of a one-pot, wash-free process for the ionic-liquid pretreatment and saccharification of switchgrass — a leading potential biofuel feedstock. By combining…
AMT International Inc. (Plano, Texas; www.amtintl.com) and LG Chem, Ltd. (Seoul, Korea; www.lgchem.com) have successfully converted an existing sulfolane liquid-liquid extraction (LLE) unit at LG Chem’s Yeosu plant using a new extractive-distillation (ED) process for aromatics recovery. This technology was…
Cement manufacturing is a major source of greenhouse gas emissions due to two factors: carbon dioxide is released when calcium carbonate calcines to lime (CaO) in the cement manufacturing process; and cement kilns are operated at temperatures of 1,500°C, which…
The selective, one-step biocatalytic hydroxylation of benzene to phenol — at ambient pressure and temperature — has been demonstrated by professors Yoshihito Watanabe and Osamu Shoji at Nagoya University (Nagoya, Japan; bioinorg.chem.nagoya-u.ac.jp). The achievement was made using a wild-type of…
Solar steam The Middle East’s first solar enhanced-oil-recovery (EOR) project was recently commissioned by Petroleum Development Oman (PDO; Muscat, Oman; www.pdo.co.om). The project uses Enclosed Trough technology from GlassPoint (Fremont, Calif.; www.glasspoint.com) to produce an average of 50 ton/d of…