Merck KGaA (Darmstadt; www.merck.de) and Plastic Logic GmbH (Dresden, both Germany; www.plasticlogic.com) today announced plans to jointly develop, test and commercialize Merck’s new organic semiconductors in Plastic Logic’s displays. The production and launch of these new materials are planned for…
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…
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…
Scientists at Carbon Sciences Inc. (Santa Barbara, Calif.; www.carbonsciences.com) have successfully demonstrated a CO2-to-fuel process that proceeds under mild conditions using fluegas emissions as a carbon dioxide source and brackish water as a hydrogen source. The modular, three-step process is…
A hard biomaterial Researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Manufacturing Engineering and Applied Materials Research (IFAM; Bremen, Germany; www.ifam.fraunhofer.de) have developed a granulate form of a biomaterial that may replace titanium used as screws and other hardware in medical applications.…
Next year IHI Corp. (IHI; Tokyo, Japan; www.ihi.co.jp) plans to construct a demonstration plant in Indonesia that will gasify 50 ton/d of lignite (brown coal) into synthesis gas (syngas; predominantly hydrogen and carbon monoxide) using IHI’s twin-tower, bubbling fluidized-bed gasification process.…