Air Liquide (Paris; www.airliquide.com) has signed long-term contracts with two steel producers in China, and will invest €75 million overall to meet the needs of these new customers. This investment strengthens the Group’s leading position in the Chinese steel market. China…
Solvay S.A. (Brussels, Belgium; www.solvay.com) says it will invest over €5 million in the construction of a test fuel cell with a total electric power of 1 MW at the SolVin plant in Lillo, Antwerp, Belgium. The investment is part of…
The global engineering and construction company M+W Group (formerly M+W Zander; Stuttgart, Germany; www.mwgroup.net) strengthens its business in the U.S. and in Canada. Today, the company announced that its subsidiary, M+W Americas, Inc. purchased 100% of Global Automation Partners (GAP;…
The gas-to-liquids (GTL) process offers a promising option for producing valuable liquid fuels from gas resources that would otherwise be wasted. These include associated gas (the gas produced along with oil, which is now frequently disposed of by flaring or…
To address the needs for the fast-growing photovoltaic (PV) market, DuPont (Wilmington, Del.; www.dupont.com) opened the Meyrin Photovoltaic Application Laboratory at its European Technical Center – adding new capabilities to this leading R&D hub by developing next-generation products. Over 50…
Pöyry Plc. (Helsinki; www.poyry.com) has been awarded an engineering contract by SAICA Containerboard UK Ltd. for one of the world’s most advanced recycled paper mills to be built at Partington Wharfside, near Manchester, U.K. The value of Pöyry’s assignment is…
Brain AG (Zwingenberg; www.brain-biotech.de) Bayer Schering Pharma AG (Bergkamen, both Germany; www.bayerscheringpharma.de) are cooperating in the field of production process optimization of steroid compounds. The goal of the collaboration is the energy-efficient and thus sustainable fermentative production of steroid compounds…
A recently commercialized method for growing single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNs) in large quantities enables their use in a downstream process for depositing semiconducting inks onto flexible surfaces. Southwest NanoTechnologies Inc. (Norman, Okla.; www.swentnano.com) has developed a scalable technique (CoMoCAT process)…
Plant Watch Outotec to deliver precious-metals plant in China January 25, 2010 — Outotec Oy (Espoo, Finland; http://www.outotec.com) has signed a contract with Baiyin Non Ferrous Group for the design and delivery of a new precious metals plant in Gansu…
Professor Shigeru Yamago and colleagues at the Institute for Chemical Research, Kyoto University (Japan; www.scl.kyoto-u.ac.jp/~yasuyuki/) have synthesized [8]cycloparaphenylene for the first time. The 11-nm-dia. molecule consists of eight benzene molecules linked together in a closed chain. The compound has a…