In The News
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…
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…
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…
Srategic partnership forms for acrylonitrile and sodium cyanide in the Middle East
Saudi Basic Industries Corp. (SABIC; Riyadh, Saudi Arabia; www.sabic.com), Asahi Kasei Chemicals Corp. (Tokyo; www.asahi-kasei.co.jp) and Mitsubishi Corp. (Tokyo; www.mitsubishicorp.com) have signed a strategic joint venture (JV) agreement to form a limited liability company, Saudi Japanese Acrylonitrile Company (SHROUQ), which…
A new MTR plant for Koksan in Turkey
Koksan PET Packaging Industry Co., a leading producer of PET preforms has signed a contract with Uhde Inventa-Fischer GmbH (Berlin, Germany and Domat/Ems, Switzerland; www.uhde-inventa-fischer.com) to build a new plant for the production of high-quality polyethylene terephthalate (PET) in Gaziantep,…
Technip awarded refining contract in Brazil
Technip (Paris, France; www.technip.com), in consortium with Tomé Engenharia, was awarded by Petrobras a lump sum turnkey engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contract, for five new units at the Presidente Bernardes Refinery in Cubatão, state of São Paulo, Brazil. This…
MHI: Producing biofuel locally at low cost
Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd. (MHI; Tokyo, Japan; www.mhi.co.jp) has successfully established technology to produce ethanol for automobile fuel, satisfying the standards of the Japanese Automotive Standards Organization (JASO), from lignocellulose (soft cellulose) such as rice straw and barley straw. Verification…
KBR: EPC contract for biomass-to-crude project
KBR, Inc. (Houston; www.kbr.com) has been awarded an engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contract by KiOR, Inc. (Pasadena, Tex.; www.kior.com) to build a first-of-its-kind biomass-to-renewable crude facility to be located in Columbus, Miss. The facility is designed to process approximately…
Metso to supply pulp-mill key technology to Suzano
Metso Corp. (Helsinki, Finland; www.metso.com) has concluded an agreement to supply all main technology for the 1.5 million tonnes greenfield pulp mill of Suzano Papel e Celulose S.A., to be built in the state of Maranhão in the northeastern part…