Stamicarbon B.V. (Sittard, The Netherlands; www.stamicarbon.com), the Licensing and IP Center of Maire Tecnimont S.p.A. (Milan, Italy; www.mairetecnimont.it), has been awarded two contracts for a new urea plant with Inner Mongolia Erdos Chemical Industry Group Co. in the People’s Republic…
AMEC (London, U.K.; www.amec.com) has been awarded a $528 million (£330 million) Project Management Consultancy (PMC) contract by the Kuwait National Petroleum Co. (KNPC) for a new petroleum refinery at Al Zour, Kuwait. When completed in 2018, the multi-billion dollar…
Maire Tecnimont S.p.A. (Milan, Italy; www.mairetecnimont.com) says that its main subsidiary Tecnimont S.p.A. (Rome, Italy) has been awarded by Etileno XXI Services B.V., an engineering and procurement contract on lump-sum basis for the realization of a 300,000-ton/yr low-density polyethylene (LDPE)…
Fluor Corp. (Irving, Tex.; www.fluor.com) was awarded a new project by Saudi Arabian Mining Company (Ma’aden). Fluor’s scope of work is to provide project management consulting (PMC) services related to the development of the Umm Wu’al greenfield phosphate project and…
Toyo Engineering Corp. (Toyo; Chiba, Japan; www.toyo-eng.co.jp) and its consortium partner Daewoo Nigeria Ltd. have jointly received letter of award to build world’s largest single train urea plant from Indorama Eleme Fertilizer and Chemicals Ltd. The proposed facility shall be…
A demonstration plant for the production of acetic acid from the carbon dioxide in industrial offgases will be built at an operating plant of Petronas (Kuala Lumpur; www.petronas.com.my), Malaysia’s national oil company, under an agreement with LanzaTech (Roselle, Ill.; www.lanzatech.com),…
The volume of heavy, sour crude oil processed by North American refineries is steadily increasing, and along with it a commensurate demand for hydrogen to upgrade that oil. A steam-reforming process that would allow refiners to produce their own H2…
Newlight Technologies (Irvine, Calif.; www.newlight.com) has launched commercial production of a polyhydroxyalkanoate (PHA) thermoplastic made from air and greenhouse gases, such as methane, that can be manufactured less expensively than conventional petroleum-derived alternatives, using a novel high-efficiency biocatalyst and bioreactor…
The research groups of Hideo Hosono and Michikazu Hara at the Materials and Structures Laboratory, Tokyo Institute of Technology (TiTech; Yokohama, Japan; www.msl.titech.ac.jp) have developed a high-performance catalyst for the synthesis of ammonia. In the laboratory, the catalyst is found…
Meanwhile, professor Kazuhito Hashimoto at the University of Tokyo (Japan; www.light.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp) has developed new photocatalyst materials based on copper-titanium oxide, which exhibits superior antiviral effectiveness and enhanced antibacterial properties compared to existing systems. Developed with support from NEDO, this new…