In The News
Solvay to build large bicarbonate plant in Thailand, and more business news
Plant Watch Novozymes and Beta Renewables open advanced biofuels facility in Italy October 9, 2013 — Novozymes (Copenhagen, Denmark; www.novozymes.com), a producer of industrial enzymes, and Beta Renewables, opened what is said to be the world’s largest advanced biofuels facility,…
Capture realtime images of gas leaks with this technology
New gas-cloud imaging technology from Rebellion Photonics (Houston; www.rebellionphotonics.com) monitors facilities for gas leaks and is capable of imaging chemical releases in realtime, identifying and quantifying gas clouds over large sections of a facility (photo). The company’s technology aims to…
A new material for large-scale energy storage devices
Researchers from the Australian National University (ANU; Canberra; www.anu.edu.au), and the University of New South Wales (Sydney, Australia; www.unsw.edu.au) claim to have obtained a temperature- and frequency-independent colossal permittivity (CP) material with a low dielectric loss, making it strikingly superior…
November Chementator Briefs
Reforming catalyst Haldor Topsøe A/S (Lyngby, Denmark; www.topsoe.com) has introduced a new alkali-promoted steam-reforming catalyst, dubbed RK-400. RK-400 is engineered to protect against unwanted carbon formation while achieving a higher level of catalytic activity than those previously seen in…
Heat Transfer for Huge-Scale Fermentation
Industrial microbiology continues to hold the promise of producing an increasingly large array of commercially important chemicals because an ever-wider number of useful microbes is being developed and successfully deployed at commercially viable scales. Today, many of these bio-based chemicals…
First commercial-scale high-solids anaerobic digester in North America
Harvest Power (Waltham, Mass.; www.harvestpower.com) recently began operation of the first commercial-scale, high-solids anaerobic digester in North America. The facility produces biogas from food waste and yard waste in Richmond, B.C., Canada. “The anaerobic digester employs essentially the same biology…
Bacteria engineered to make gasoline
Short-chain hydrocarbons have been produced for the first time by microbial fermentation by a research team from the Dept. of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST; Daejeon, South Korea, www.kaist.ac.kr), led by…
Clariant opens new innovation center in Frankfurt
Clariant (Muttenz, Switzerland; www.clariant.com) is today officially opening its new €100-million Clariant Innovation Center (CIC) in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. The company’s new global hub for Research & Development (R&D) is based at the Industriepark Höchst. It will be the…
Clariant plans to divest Leather Services Business to Stahl
Clariant (Muttenz, Switzerland; www.clariant.com) plans to sell its Leather Services business to Stahl Holdings B.V. (Waalwijk, the Netherlands; www.stahl.com), which is majority-owned by Wendel Group. Stahl is a Dutch company providing high quality chemicals, dyes and coatings for leather and…
World’s largest SNG plant goes onstream in China
Haldor Topsøe A/S (Lyngby, Denmark; www.topsoe.com) says that Qinghua, the largest substitute natural gas (SNG) plant ever built in the world was successfully started in the city of Yining, located in Xinjiang, a region in the northwestern part of China.…