In The News
Sadara Chemical opts for intra-logistics from the Haver Group
Together with its Westphalia-based parent company Haver & Boecker (www.haverboecker.com) and machine builder Möllers, Feige Filling GmbH received its biggest order in its more than 40 year company-history from Foster & Wheeler. The order is part of the world’s largest…
BASF to increase global capacities for BDO and PolyTHF
BASF SE (Ludwigshafen, Germany; www.basf.com) will increase its global capacities for producing the chemical intermediate 1,4-butanediol (BDO) and the BDO derivative PolyTHF (polytetramethylene ether glycol; PTMEG) within the coming two years. BASF’s annual BDO capacity will rise from 535,000 to…
Air Liquide starts up world’s largest helium unit in Qatar
Air Liquide (Paris, France; www.airliquide.com) recently started up the world’s largest helium purification and liquefaction unit, a turnkey project at Ras Laffan Industrial City, Qatar. The new unit’s production capacity is approximately 38 million m3/yr of helium. The high technologies…
Praxair enters into industrial gas JV with Kuibyshevazot
Praxair, Inc. (Danbury, Conn.; www.praxair.com) has entered into a definitive agreement to form a joint venture (JV) with OJSC KuibyshevAzot (Moscow, Russia; www.kuazot.ru), in central Russia’s Samara region, to produce and sell industrial gases. The JV will produce on-site oxygen,…
Linde to build large ammonia plant in Russia, and more business news
Plant Watch Uhde Inventa-Fischer to build commercial-scale Nofia plant June 12, 2013 — Uhde Inventa-Fischer AG (Berlin, Germany and Domat/Ems, Switzerland; www.uhde-inventa-fischer.com) has won a contract to build the world’s first commercial-scale plant for production of Nofia, a flame retardant…
Burner technology enables reduced NOx with short flame length
To comply with increasingly stringent regulations for NOx emissions, operators of industrial plants often turn to low-NOx burners to avoid much more costly post-combustion treatment approaches like selective catalytic reduction (SCR). But low-NOx burners are plagued by significant losses in…
These scavengers of water pollutants have a magnetic attraction
A process that uses magnetic nanoparticles, coated with a reactive material, to clean up contaminated water for human use is being developed at Stanford University (Stanford, Calif.; www.stanford.edu). The nanoscavengers, as they are called, are distributed in the water to…
Improved corrosion control in refinery steam systems
GE Power & Water (Trevose, Pa.; www.ge.com) has introduced a novel, dual-pronged approach to corrosion inhibition for boiler and steam-condensate systems in petroleum refineries. The technology is designed to prevent attack by acidic species on steam-system surfaces, providing reliability to…
Using low-temperature waste heat to make power
New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO; Kawasaki City; www.nedo.go.jp) and Panasonic Corp. (Osaka, both Japan; panasonic.net) have begun testing a new type of power-generation system that uses anisotropic solid-state composites that produce an electrical current when a temperature…
A salty way to scrub CO2
Ammonia is a promising candidate for scrubbing carbon dioxide from fluegas, since each ammonia molecule can absorb one molecule of CO2, whereas amine absorbers require two molecules to do the same job. However, because ammonia is volatile, the fluegas must…