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…
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…
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…
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…
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.;…
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…
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…