In The News
UOP technology selected for petrochemicals complex in Brunei
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 wins fabrication award for first Canadian oil-sands CCS project in Alberta
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…
MOFs that reversibly capture CO2
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…
April Chementator Briefs
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…
Production facility for stabilized sodium slated for startup
A new plant for manufacturing sodium silicide (Na4Si4;diagram), a non-flammable, air-stable powder that reacts with water to generate pure hydrogen, is under development near Niagara Falls, N.Y. by SiGNa Chemistry Inc. (New York; signachem.com). Scheduled for startup in the third…
Nano-engineering infuses growing coatings market
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…
AkzoNobel Chemical Island starts supply to world’s biggest single-line pulp mill; and more business news
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…
Simplified CO2-to-methanol process uses copper-oxide nanowires
A process developed by researchers at the University of Texas at Arlington (www.uta.edu) uses copper-based semiconductor nanoscale-rod arrays and solar radiation to carry out a photoelectroreduction of carbon dioxide to methanol. The process offers a pathway to utilize the greenhouse…
First application of sulfuric acid heap leach to vanadium
Following a positive feasibility study, American Vanadium Corp. (Vancouver, B.C.; www.americanvanadium.com) will construct the world’s first sulfuric acid heap-leach mining operation for vanadium at a specific geologic formation in central Nevada, known as Gibellini Hill. The project is currently in…
Toyo awarded PE-plant contract in Egypt
Toyo Engineering Corp. (Toyo; Chiba, Japan; www.toyo-eng.co.jp) has been jointly awarded with ENPPI, an engineering company under the Egyptian Ministry of Petroleum, a contract to build a 400,000 ton/yr polyethylene (PE) plant as part of Ethydco's petrochemical complex to be…