In The News
AkzoNobel plans to restructure ICI Pakistan
Akzo Nobel N.V. (AkzoNobel; Amsterdam, the Netherlands; www.akzonobel.com) has announced its intention to seek agreement from the Board and shareholders of ICI Pakistan Ltd. (ICI Pakistan) to separate the organization's paints and chemicals businesses. Under the terms of the proposal,…
Teijin resumes PET production at Utsunomiya plant following earthquake
Teijin Limited (Tokyo; www.teijin.co.jp/english) has announced that the Utsunomiya Factory (Tochigi Prefecture) of Teijin DuPont Films Ltd., which had suspended polyethylene terephthalate (PET) film production following the earthquake in northeastern Japan on March 11, resumed partial operations on April 30.…
Desalination without pressure or membranes
After a nine-month field demonstration at BTX, Inc.’s Sleepy well site in Indiana, Pa., Altela Inc.’s (Albuquerque, N.M.; www.altelainc.com) AltelaRain 4000 water desalination system has been shown to turn Marcellus Shale wastewater into distilled water. The demonstration, funded by the…
May Chementator Briefs
Wastewater reuse Aqua-Chem Inc. (Knoxville, Tenn.; www.aqua-chem.com) has developed a filtration-based process for purifying wastewater from large-scale carpet manufacturing. The process effectively removes dyes and other additives from wastewater to reduce concentrations from around 800 ppm to less than…
Freeze-drying based on fine-spray produces uniform microspheres
A freeze-drying system recently commercialized by ULVAC, Inc. (Chigasaki, Japan; www.ulvac.co.jp) produces spherical particles by spraying a solution into a vacuum chamber. The approach has numerous advantages over conventional freeze-drying, and can be used for generating dry powders in the…
Getting a Reaction
As chemical processors continue their quest to process more with less equipment, they are seeking reactors capable of helping with this endeavor. For this reason, many are turning to continuous flow reactors because they provide scaleability and flexibility. However, vendors…
CNT-enhanced membranes show promise for desalination method
By immobilizing carbon nanotubes (CNTs) within polymer membrane pores, scientists at the New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT; Newark, N.J.; www.njit.edu) were able to significantly improve the efficiency of desalination via a membrane distillation process. Somenath Mitra and colleagues at…
Wacker expands its polysilicon production in Germany, and other business news
Evonik builds surfactants plant in China March 30, 2011 — Evonik Industries AG (Essen, Germany; www.evonik.com) is building an integrated production plant for organic specialty surfactants at its site in Shanghai, China. With an investment in the upper double-digit million…
A step closer to commercial production of spider silk
Spider silk has many unique properties that make it suitable for applications such as coatings and medical products. As a protein, the silk is remarkably stable and is only destroyed physically or digested and recycled by the spider. However, an…
‘One-pot’ ammonia-borane recharging could boost fuel-cell vehicles
Ammonia borane’s (AB) capacity to contain and easily release large amounts of hydrogen has made it an attractive candidate to store the gas for onboard fuel-cell powered vehicles. A major technological hurdle that remains is how to reintroduce hydrogen to…