Fine polyester fibers Teijin Fibers Ltd. (Tokyo, Japan; teijinfiber.com), the core company of the Teijin Groups polyester-fiber business, is commercializing a new version of its Nanofront, high-strength polyester nanofiber with a diameter of 400 nm — nearly half that…
Harnessing renewable energy by catalytic dissociation and synthesis of ammonia has shown promise for distributed power applications, according to a team from the Center for Energy at the University of Western Australia (www.uwa.edu.au), led by professor Dongke Zhang. In the…
Plant Watch UOP’s Oleflex technology selected by Dow Chemical January 6, 2012 — UOP LLC (Des Plaines, Ill.; www.uop.com), a Honeywell company, has been selected by The Dow Chemical Co. (Midland, Mich.; www.dow.com) to provide technology to produce propylene at…
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…