In North America, Evonik Industries AG (Essen, Germany; www.evonik.com) is doubling its capacities for producing the feed amino acid L-lysine. The two-phase expansion of the Blair, Nebraska plant to an annual capacity of 280,000 metric tons (m.t.) is on track…
Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd. (MHI; Tokyo, Japan; www.mhi.co.jp) and Suhail Bahwan Group (SBG; Oman) have established a joint venture (JV) engineering company, namely MHI Engineering and Industrial Projects India Private Ltd. (MEIP), in India effective September 2, 2011. MEIP…
Lanxess AG (Leverkusen, Germany; www.lanxess.com) is investing €15 million in its glass fiber plant in the Antwerp docklands. For the specialty chemicals company glass fibers are a key intermediate for the production of high-tech plastics. With the expansion, the actual…
BASF Corp. (Iselin, N.J.; www.basf.com) has signed a long-term supply agreement with Lynas Corp. (Sydney, Australia; www.lynascorp.com), a fully integrated provider of Rare Earth materials. Under terms of the agreement, Lynas will supply BASF with a pre-determined annual volume of…
A project aimed at using geothermal heat to power an electricity-producing turbine with supercritical carbon dioxide has received a $5 million grant from the U.S. Dept. of Energy (DOE; Washington, D.C.; www.energy.gov). The project also incorporates an element of CO2…
Phosgenation scaleup At the end of July, Bayer MaterialScience AG (BMS; Leverkusen, Germany; www.bayerbms.com) successfully tested its new gas-phase phosgenation technology at a new plant being commissioned for making toluene diisocyanate (TDI) — a raw material for making polyurethane —…
A process to greatly enhance the ability of sand to filter heavy metals from water has been developed by researchers from Monash University, of Melbourne, Australia (www.monash.edu.au), Rice University (Houston; www.rice.edu) and Nanoholdings LLC (Marietta, Ga.; www.nanoholdings.com). Historically, the researchers…
Metabolix Inc. (Cambridge, Mass.; www.metabolix.com) has successfully demonstrated and completed research and development for scaleup on a fermentation process that produces gamma -butyrolactone (GBL) from genetically engineered bacteria. The process is built upon the company’s technology for engineering metabolic pathways…
Since the isolation of graphene by the “Scotch tape” method, many researchers have tried to synthesize solution-dispersible graphene. The challenge has been to develop a high-yield method that can exfoliate graphite efficiently into solution-dispersible graphene sheets without collateral damage to…
Today only a few percent of Canada’s oil sands resource is accessible by traditional surface mining, so the rest has to be recovered in situ, mostly by steam-assisted gravity drainage (SAGD). In this process, steam is injected into a horizontal…