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…
Ineos Technologies (www.ineos.com) has today confirmed it has licensed its Innovene PP Process for the manufacture of homopolymers, random copolymers and impact copolymers to the Shaanxi Yanchang Petroleum Yanan Energy and Chemical Company Limited in Shaanxi, China. The 300,000-ton/yr Innovene…
Foster Wheeler AG (Zug, Switzerland; www.fwc.com) announced today that a subsidiary of its Global Engineering and Construction Group has been awarded a contract for the basic engineering design of a new hydrogen production unit, based on Foster Wheeler Terrace-Wall steam-reforming…
Cellulosic biomass pretreated with ammonia undergoes structural changes that make it more susceptible to enzymatic attack, scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory (Los Alamos, N.M.; www.lanl.gov) and collaborators at the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center (Madison, Wisc.; www.glbrc.org) have found.…
Anew process to make BTX (benzene, toluene and xylenes) from light cycle oil (LCO), an oversupplied product of petroleum refineries that can supplement the dwindling supply of BTX precursors, is being developed by JX Nippon Oil & Energy (JX Energy;…
Plant Watch Solvay to form JV with Sadara to build H2O2 plant in Saudi Arabia July 28, 2011 — Solvay S.A. (Brussels, Belgium; www.solvay.com) intends to create a 50:50 joint venture (JV) with Sadara Chemical Co. (itself a planned JV…
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 —…