In The News
Solar Semi Engineering acquires Edwards CME
Solar Semi Engineering Ltd. (SSE; U.K.; www.solsemi.com) , a solar and semiconductor start-up company, today purchased the business and assets of Edwards Chemical Management Europe Limited (CME; Newhaven, U.K.) for an undisclosed sum. CME is part of Edwards (Crawley, U.K.; www.edwardsvacuum.com),…
Sugar-derived compounds can be model solidifiers for oil spills
Professor George John and graduate student Swapnil Jadhav at the City College of New York (www.ccny.cuny.edu) are lead authors of a paper on a class of compounds, known as phase-selective gelators, that can selectively solidify an oil phase in water.…
KBR & Saudi Kayan: Startup of grassroots cracker
KBR Inc. (Houston; www.kbr.com) today announced the start-up of a 1.35-million metric tons per year (m.t./yr) steam cracker at Saudi Kayan Petrochemical Co.’s (Saudi Kayan) olefins plant located in Saudi Kayan’s Petrochemical Complex at Al-Jubail, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. KBR executed…
September chementator briefs
Worlds largest PDH unit Lummus Technology (Bloomfield, N.J.), a CB&I company (The Woodlands, Tex.; www.cbi.com), has been awarded a contract by Tianjin Bohua Petrochemical Co. for the license and engineering design of a grassroots propane dehydrogenation (PDH) unit to…
Pall: Contract for NG-purification technologies
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.…
Enzyme-based method could make CO2 capture economically viable
Codexis (Redwood City, Calif.; www.codexis.com) and CO2 Solution (Quebec City, Canada; www.co2solution.com) have jointly developed a cost-effective method for capturing carbon dioxide from coal-fired power plants. Solvent-based systems for capturing CO2 are relatively well-understood, but they have not been widely…
An attractive way to remove arsenic from water
A magnetic composite based on reduced graphene oxide (RGO) has been developed by a Korean team with an exceptional capacity to remove arsenic from drinking water. The team, headed by professor Kwang S. Kim from the Center for Superfunctional Materials,…
KBR lands contract for LiOH-operation expansion
KBR Inc. (Houston; www.kbr.com) announced that its Downstream business unit has been awarded a contract to provide engineering and procurement services to Chemetall Foote Corp. (www.chemetalllithium.com) — a subsidiary of Rockwood Holdings, Inc. (www.rocksp.com) — for the addition of lithium…
QualaWash acquires Manfredi Special Services
QualaWash Holdings, LLC (QHL; Tampa, Fla.; www.qualawash.com) announces the purchase of Manfredi Special Services (MSS; www.mssibc.com) tote/IBC operations including cleaning, maintenance, fleet management and leasing. Taking advantage of QualaWash’s 30 existing sites nationwide, the MSS integration will provide shippers of…
SABIC signs alcohol-technology licensing agreement
Saudi Basic Industries Corp. (SABIC; Riyadh, Saudi Arabia; www.sabic.com) has signed an agreement with Lurgi GmbH (Frankfurt, Germany; www.lurgi.com), for the technology licensing and engineering that will allow SABIC to produce oleo-chemicals at its affiliate, Saudi Kayan Petrochemical Co., following…