In The News
Making fine particles of inhalable drugs
A team from the School of Chemical Sciences and Engineering, at the University of New South Wales (Sydney, Australia; www.unsw.edu.au), has developed a process for the micronization of insulin called Arise (Atomized Rapid Injection for Solvent Extraction). According to BioParticle…
Cellulose-to-aromatics process simplifies BTX production
A single-step method to convert cellulosic biomass into aromatic compounds offers a simpler and more environmentally friendly route to the petrochemical feedstocks benzene, toluene and xylenes (BTX), according to a Massachusetts bioenergy startup company seeking to scale up the technique.…
Biobased succinic acid pilot effort underway
Pilot-scale production of biobased succinic acid from dextrose has been demonstrated by Myriant Technologies (Quincy, Mass., www.myriant.com). The firm expects commercial production by mid-2010. The succinic-acid process follows Myriant’s successful commercialization with partner Purac (Blair, Neb.; www.purac.com) of a biobased…
Green honors
In June, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agancy (EPA; Washington, D.C.; www.epa.gov) announced the winners of the 2009 Presidential Green Chemistry Challenge Awards. Winners of the Challenge, which promotes R&D of less hazardous alternatives to existing technologies that reduce or eliminate…
Making SunCatchers instead of cars
Stirling Energy Systems (SES; Phoenix, Ariz.; www.stirlingenergy.com) and Tessera Solar (Houston; www.tesserasolar.com) recently unveiled four, newly designed solar-power collection dishes at Sandia National Laboratories’ National Solar Thermal Test Facility (Albuquerque, N.M.). The refined design of SunCatchers will be used in…
DSM to sell urea-licensing business to Maire Tecnimont
Royal DSM N.V. (Heerlen, Netherlands; www.dsm.com) and Maire Tecnimont S.p.A. (Rome, Italy; www.mairetecnimont.it) announce today that they have reached an agreement for the sale of DSM’s urea-licensing subsidiary Stamicarbon B.V. to Maire Tecnimont for a total consideration of 38-million euros…
BASF extends joint R&D program with IMEC
BASF SE (Ludwigshafen, Germany; www.basf.com) and IMEC (Leuven, Belgium; www2.imec.be), Europe's leading independent nanoelectronics research center, have announced today that they are extending their joint development program. The process chemicals which the two partners plan to develop as part of…
GEA builds automatic dairy plant in Chile
The Process Technology Segment of GEA Group AG (Bochum, Germany; www.geagroup.com) has received an order for about 9-million euros from Nestlé to build the liquid processing part of a Growing-Up Milk plant in Chile. The new plant will be located…
Agilent acquires Varian for $1.5 billion
Agilent Technologies, Inc. (Santa Clara, Calif.; www.agilent.com) and Varian, Inc. (Palo Alto, Calif.; www.varianinc.com) have signed a definitive agreement for the acquisition by Agilent of Varian, a leading worldwide supplier of scientific instrumentation and associated consumables for life science and…
Altana acquires Water Ink Technologies
The specialty chemicals Group Altana AG (Wesel, Germany; www.altana.com) has entered into an agreement to acquire the business of the North American company Water Ink Technologies, Inc. The company produces primarily water-based and UV inks, coatings and varnishes for narrow…