Recovery boilers, in which pulp and paper companies burn spent black liquor from the kraft pulping process to recover and recycle sodium and sulfur, are a bottleneck in many paper mills. The reason is that they operate at their upper…
A new catalyst that converts H2 and CO2 into formic acid under mild conditions has been developed by researchers at the Solar Light Energy Conversion Group of Energy Technology Research Institute, National Institute for Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST;…
UOP LLC (Des Plaines, Ill.; www.uop.com), a Honeywell company, says that it has been selected by Sinochem to provide technology to purify hydrogen at a new petroleum refinery in China. Sinochem Quanzhou Petrochemical Co. — a fully owned subsidiary of…
A novel cold-dry process makes possible the utilization of fine form-factor silicon, such as granules and sand-like fines, in the production of high-purity polysilicon for solar photovoltaic cells and semiconductors, where such fine-grained material would normally have to be sent…
A new solid-state basic catalyst for forming carbon-carbon bonds has been developed by Masaru Ogura, an associate professor, and his research group at the Institute of Industrial Science, University of Tokyo (www.u-tokyo.ac.jp). The catalyst has been shown to accelerate the…
This month, Borregaard Industries Ltd. (Sarpsborg, Norway; www.borregaard.com) will start up an integrated, pilot-demonstration plant to further develop a new pretreatment process for converting biomass into lignin and fermentable sugars. Located at the company’s R&D Center in Sarpsborg, the pilot…
This month, Borregaard Industries Ltd. (Sarpsborg, Norway; www.borregaard.com) will start up an integrated, pilot-demonstration plant to further develop a new pretreatment process for converting biomass into lignin and fermentable sugars. Located at the company’s R&D Center in Sarpsborg, the pilot…
Plant Watch Petrochemicals expansion project in the U.S. awarded to CB&I April 9, 2012 — CB&I (The Woodlands, Tex.; www.cbi.com) has been awarded a contract by Williams Olefins, LLC for a petrochemicals expansion project in Geismar, La. Plant capacity…
A research team from the Institute for Photonics and Advanced Sensing, and the School of Chemistry and Physics, the University of Adelaide, South Australia (www.adelaide.edu.au) has combined suspended-core microstructured optical fibers (MOFs) with photoinduced electron transfer (PET) to demonstrate a…
As in almost all other aspects of producing chemicals, processors are looking for cost-effective sensing solutions. And they won’t be disappointed by the newest offering of sensors for the chemical process industries (CPI). Gas and pH sensors, as well as…