Fluor Corp. (Irving, Tex.; www.fluor.com) says that Arlington Valley Solar Energy II, LLC (AVSE II), a member of LS Power Group, has awarded Fluor a lump-sum engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contract, as well as a separate contract for ongoing…
JGC Corp. (Yokohama, Japan; www.jgc.co.jp) has been awarded a contract for a project to renovate cooling water facilities at a thermal power plant in Nassiriyah in southern Iraq. This marks the first post-Iraq War lump-sum contract for engineering, procurement, and…
AkzoNobel (Amsterdam, the Netherlands; www.akzonobel.com) is planning to invest €80 million in the construction of a new pulp Chemical Island facility in Brazil. The plant, operated by the company's Pulp and Paper Chemicals business, Eka Chemicals, will supply the Suzano…
ThyssenKrupp AG (Essen, Germany; www.thyssenkrupp.com) and Outokumpu Oyj (Espoo, Finland; www.outokumpu.com) today announced the combination of Outokumpu with Inoxum, the stainless steel unit of ThyssenKrupp, to create a new global leader in stainless steel. Agreements to this effect have been…
Professor Kenichiro Itami and coworkers at at Nagoya University (Nagoya, Japan; synth.chem.nagoya-u.ac.jp) have developed a new, next-generation type of cross-coupling reaction for synthesizing biphenyl compounds — one of the most important backbone structures for pharmaceutical and electronics chemicals. The chemists…
Acidity is a critical parameter in the chemical process industries, and accurate measurements of pH can be important indicators for process quality control. A refreshed understanding of pH measurement can help to overcome process-specific challenges to measurement and to select…
An organosilica material with unique structural properties due to its nanoscale architecture has been used to extract hydrocarbons and other organic contaminants from water. Marketed as Osorb by ABS Materials Inc. (Wooster, Ohio; www.absmaterials.com), the nanostructured glass represents a platform…
A newly demonstrated system for removing trace levels of heavy metals from water combines the positive traits of two existing technologies — chemical precipitation and electrowinning — while avoiding drawbacks of each. An engineering team at Brown University (Providence, R.I.;…
A microwave vessel heating system — said to be the first commercial, industrial-scale system of its kind — has been developed by Marion Mixers (Marion; www.marionmixers.com) in partnership with AMTek Microwave (Cedar Rapids, both Iowa; www.4amtek.com) with patent pending technology…
Oji Paper Co. (OJI; www.ojipaper.co.jp), in collaboration with Nippon Steel Engineering Co. (www.nsc-eng.co.jp) and the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST; all Tokyo, Japan; www.aist.go.jp), has started pilot testing of a new, integrated process for making cellulose-based…