In The News
Teijin Frontier to establish new company in Myanmar
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-Hatch to deliver a technology license for a potential alumina refinery in the UAE
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…
Clariant certifies cellulosic-ethanol plant
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…
Haldor Topsøe licensing technology to Azerbaijan’s first ammonia-urea complex
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…
Solvay and Sadara JV begins construction of H2O2 plant in Saudi Arabia
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…
A one-pot process to pretreat and saccharify biomass
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…
Successful implementation of a new extractive-distillation technology for aromatics recovery
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 technology increases strength and lowers emissions footprint
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…
A direct, one-step enzymatic hydroxylation of benzene to phenol
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…
September Chementator Briefs
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…