W. R. Grace & Co. (Columbia, Md.; www.grace.com) today announced a new multi-year agreement to supply polypropylene (PP) catalysts to Borealis AG (Vienna, Austria; www.borealisgroup.com), a leading provider of chemical and innovative plastics solutions. Financial terms were not disclosed. Grace…
We Energies (Milwaukee, Wisc.; www.we-energies.com) has awarded Pöyry Oyj (Hessinki, Finland; www.poyry.com) an engineering contract for a €185-million capital project for a new 50-MW biomass cogeneration plant to be constructed at the Domtar paper mill facility in Rothschild, Wisc. The…
SGL Group SE (Wiesbaden, Germany; www.sglcarbon.com) and BMW Group (Munich, Germany; www.bmwgroup.com) jointly announced today at an event in Seattle that their joint venture, SGL Automotive Carbon Fibers LLC, will build a state-of-the-art carbon fiber manufacturing plant in Moses Lake,…
Technip (Paris, France; www.technip.com) has been awarded two contracts by Hindustan Petroleum Corp. (HPCL) for its diesel hydrotreater project in the Visakh petroleum refinery, on the east coast of India. The two contracts, which are scheduled to be completed by…
Professor Tetsu Yonezawa at the Materials Science Div. of Hokkaido University (Sapporo; labs.eng.hokudai.ac.jp/labo/limsa/english/), in collaboration with Arios, Inc. (Akishima; www.arios.co.jp) and Suga (Hokuto, all Japan; www.suga.ne.jp), has developed a microwave-assisted device that can continuously generate a plasma under water. In…
Biodiesel fuel is being produced for under $2/gal from product wastes in a process commercialized by Ever Cat Fuels (Anoka, Minn.; www.evercatfuels.com). This is comparable to the cost of diesel fuel obtained from petroleum, says Arlin Gyberg, a co-inventor of the…
As producers continue to develop new applications for nanoparticles, the health, safety and environmental (HSE) hazards associated with these miniscule particles remain uncertain and controversial. To minimize the HSE risks for handling nanoparticles, GEA Niro, (Søborg, Denmark; www.niro.com) has developed…
The cleanup of nuclear waste could be simplified by a process being developed at Northwestern University (Chicago, Ill.; www.northwestern.edu) and Argonne National Laboratory (Argonne, Ill.; www.anl.gov). Nuclear waste consists mainly of non-toxic sodium ions, but this is mixed with a…
An instrument called the Cottonscope, which automatically measures cotton maturity in 25 s, has been developed by CSIRO Cotton Research Unit (Melbourne, Australia; www.csiro.au). The unit’s leader, Stuart Gordon, says the instrument has been used to measure when a crop…
This month, Showa Denko K. K. (Tokyo, Japan; www.sdk.co.jp) will begin marketing its carbon-nanotube (CNT) product, tradenamed VGCF-X. The company produces the CNTs in its new, 400-ton/yr production plant at its Oita facility, and plans to ramp up production to…