UOP LLC (Des Plaines, Ill.; www.uop.com), a Honeywell company, announced today that its technology has been selected to produce key petrochemicals in a new complex in Brunei. Brunei Hengyi Industries Sdn Bhd, a subsidiary of China’s Zhejiang Hengyi Group Co.,…
KBR (Houston; www.kbr.com) announced today that Shell Canada Energy has selected KBR to perform off-site modularization and pipe fabrication at their Edmonton Module Facility. This historic project will use Shell Quest Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) technologies to reduce CO2 emissions…
Ken-ichi Tominaga and colleagues at the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST; Tsukuba, Japan; www.aist.go.jp) have developed a hybrid catalyst system that can be used to convert cellulose into levulinic acid. The catalyst consists of two types…
The continuous quest to maximize process efficiency and boost product performance, in which all sectors of the chemical process industries (CPI) are engaged, is driving demand for technologically advanced coatings. And engineering at the nanoscale level is an increasingly common…
Detection of extremely small quantities of dangerous or hazardous substances is important in many areas, including national security, safety of public utilities and radiation prevention. Several analytical methods have been developed using structural, functional and electronic properties of nanomaterials. In…
A new and inexpensive way to produce TiFe — an alloy with potential as a material for reversibly storing hydrogen — has been developed by the research groups of professors Zenji Horita and Etsuo Akiba at Kyushu University (Fukuoka, Japan;…
Capacitive desalination, in which salt ions are electrically removed from saltwater, has been researched for decades as a potentially cheaper alternative to energy-intensive reverse osmosis (RO) and distillation, but so far its application has been limited to waters with very…
Plant Watch AkzoNobel Chemical Island starts supply to world’s biggest single-line pulp mill March 7, 2013 — AkzoNobel’s (Amsterdam, The Netherlands; www.akzonobel.com) new €90-million Jupiá Chemical Island in Brazil has begun supplying the Eldorado Brasil Celulose pulp mill, which is…
An Australian team has developed a structure made of a metal organic framework (MOF) that captures and then releases CO2 using natural sunlight. The team includes researchers from: CSIRO Division of Materials Science and Engineering, (Clayton South, Victoria; www.csiro.au) the…
Biosteel The worlds first artificial-silk fiber that is entirely made of recombinant spider-silk proteins has been produced by AMSilk GmbH (Planegg/Martinsreid, Germany; www.amsilk.com), a spin-off company of the Technical University of Munich. The fibers tensile strength is comparable to…