Solvay S.A. (Brussels, Belgium; www.solvay.com) has decided to increase the production capacity for peroxide-curable (PC) fluoroelastomers, commercialized under the trademark Tecnoflon, in the Solvay Solexis plant at Spinetta Marengo, Italy. Solvay is investing €10 million in the capacity increase, which is…
Outotec Oyj (Espoo, Finland; www.outotec.com) has won an order from Steel Authority of India Ltd (SAIL) for the design and delivery of an iron-ore sinter plant for SAIL’s Bhilai Steel Plant in Chhattisgarh. Outotec will implement the turnkey plant project…
Uhde Inventa-Fischer (Domat/Ems, Switzerland, and Berlin, Germany; www.uhde-inventa-fischer.com) and Hangzhou Hangding Nylon Tech. Co., Ltd., a company under Sanding Holding Group, Zhejiang Province, P.R. China, signed a contract for the delivery of a PA-6 polymerization plant to produce textile grade…
Pall Corp. (Port Washington, N.Y.; www.pall.com) has been contracted to supply critical enabling technologies for the Habshan 5 natural-gas (NG) treatment plant being constructed by Abu Dhabi Gas Industries Ltd. (GASCO) in the UAE. A joint venture of Tecnimont S.p.A.…
An enhanced reactor technology that boosts the speed of producing bioethanol by a factor of four while decreasing production costs by 25% compared to a stirred batch fermenter has been developed by IHI Corp. (IHI; Tokyo; www.ihi.co.jp). The technology features…
Professor Kazuaki Ishihara and colleagues at Nagoya University (Nagoya, Japan;www.nubio.nagoya-u.ac.jp/indexe.HTM) has discovered an efficient, chiral, salt-based hypervalent iodine catalyst that could replace toxic metal catalysts without generating the waste or explosion risks associated with hypervalent organo-iodine complexes. The researchers took…
Photovoltaic cells typically operate at 20% efficiency in converting solar energy to electricity. A new system that could boost the efficiency to as much as 60% by combining the light and heat of solar radiation is being developed at Stanford…
A metal membrane system developed by Eltron Research and Development (Boulder, Colo., www.eltronresearch.com) separates hydrogen from mixed-gas feed streams that result from gasification, steam reforming and petrochemical processes. Based on a proprietary, dense metal alloy with hydrogen permeability that is…
Roughly 80% of the heavy oil in Alberta’s oil sands is too deep for open-pit mining, the most common production method at present. Consequently, this oil will have to be recovered by in situ methods, such as steam-assisted gravity drainage…
TNO (Delft; www.tno.nl) and Ingrepro Renewables B.V. (Borculo, both the Netherlands; www.ingrepro.nl) have started a joint-research project to extract food ingredients from algae. Proteins, which account for up to 60 wt.% of algae, could serve as a sustainable alternative to…