In The News
40th Kirkpatrick Award Announced
Last month at the Chem Show, Chemical Engineering (CE) had the pleasure of honoring this year’s finalists and the winner of the 2009 Kirkpatrick Chemical Engineering Achievement Award, a biennial prize that the magazine has bestowed continuously since the early…
‘All-in-one fluegas scrubber cleans up sulfur and particulate matter
A multi-stage wet scrubber that combines the removal of sulfur, hydrogen chloride, sulfuric acid mist (SAM) and particulate matter (PM) in a single unit has reduced sulfur dioxide emissions by an average of 99.7% in its first large-scale commercial installation…
BASF to realign its fuel cell business and more
Siemens gasification technology selected for Taylorville Energy Center November 10, 2009 — Siemens Energy, Inc. (Orlando, Fla.; www.siemens.com) has been chosen to provide the coal gasification technology for the Taylorville Energy Center (TEC), the 730-MW (gross) advanced clean-coal generating plant…
Non-invasive probe measures corrosion inside boiler water tubes in real time
Changes in the rate of corrosion in water tubes have been detected within minutes by an externally mounted monitor developed by the Center for Nuclear Energy Research (CNER, Fredericton, NB, Canada; www.unb.ca/cner). The data were obtained in online tests over…
Higher yields and lower cost are expected for this biomass-to-ethanol process
A process that produces 75–85 gal of ethanol per dry ton of mixed cellulosic waste feed will be commercialized by BlueFire Ethanol (Irvine, Calif.; www.bluefireethanol.com). The plant, to be built in Lancaster, Calif., will convert 130 dry ton/d of feed…
The commercial debut for a process that makes ‘natural’ gas from coal
Haldor Topsøe A/S (Lyngby, Denmark; www.topsoe.com) has signed a design contract with an undisclosed client in China for a new plant that will produce substitute natural gas (SNG). When the plant comes on stream in 2011, it will produce close…
Onsite incineration of sewage sludge to be demonstrated
Incineration is becoming the only viable method for sewage sludge disposal as landfilling or spreading sludge onto farmland is no longer permitted in some countries. Today, sludge is commonly incinerated in large, centralized incinerators or as an additive in coal-fired…
Using the sun to decontaminate wastewater
Last month, a photocatalytic water-cleaning system that removes organic and inorganic contaminants that are difficult to breakdown from wastewater was inaugurated at the German Aerospace Center (DLR; Stuttgart; www.dlr.de) facility in Lampildshausem. The so-called RayWOx system features a new type…
A bioleaching process moves closer to commercialization
In February 2009, Talvivaara Mining Company Plc. (Espoo, Finland; www.talvivaara.com) delivered its first in a series of commercial shipments of metals to Norilsk Nickel Harjavalta refinery in Finland. Talvivaara expanded the crushing circuit and has restarted the metals precipitation process…
A Japanese push for bio-ETBE over bioethanol
Last month, Nippon Oil Corp. (Tokyo, Japan; www.eneos.co.jp) started production bio-ETBE (ethyl tertiary butyl ether), which will be blended into gasoline as an alternative to ethanol as an oxygenate. Nippon Petroleum Refining Co., a subsidiary of Nippon Oil, inaugurated the…