The Linde Engineering Division (Pullach, Germany; www.linde) announced that on-spec ethylene production of the Tasnee ethylene plant in Al-Jubail, Saudi Arabia, was achieved on August 23, 2008 following mechanical completion on July 15, 2008, which is six weeks ahead of…
Kazakhstan Petrochemical Industries Inc. LLP, in which LyondellBasell (Rotterdam, Netherlands; www.lyondellbasell.com) is holding a minority interest, has selected LyondellBasell’s polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP) technologies for three new plants that will have a combined capacity of 1,300,000 metric tons (m.t.)…
During the course of this year Bayer MaterialScience (BMS; Leverkusen, Germany; www.bayermaterialscience.com) plans to start construction of a state-of-the-art, world-scale facility for producing the polyurethane raw material toluene diisocyanate (TDI) at the integrated production site in Shanghai. The relevant Chinese…
Wassertechnik Essen GmbH, a subsidiary of the Austrian EVN AG, has commissioned Chemieanlagenbau Chemnitz GmbH (CAC; Chemnitz, Germany; www.cac-chem.de) to plan and erect a sodium hypochlorite plant on the basis of chlorine membrane electrolysis. Designed to have an annual capacity…
Siemens’ (Erlangen, Germany; www.siemens.com/energy) coal gasification technology has been selected for Canada’s first low-CO2 IGCC power plant. EPCOR Power Generation is planning to build an integrated gasification combined cycle power plant (IGCC) featuring carbon capture and storage in Genesee near…
Researchers at the University of Surrey (U.K., www.surrey.ac.uk) have discovered a method to make ultra-small, pure crystals of buckminsterfullerene (C60). Lozenge-shaped crystals can be made with widths of 80 nm — much smaller than the 400 nm minimum size predicted…
The global market for carbon-capture technologies was worth $88.7 billion in 2007, and is expected to increase to over $236.3 billion by 2012, according to a report published last month by BCC Research (Wellesley, Mass.; www.bccresearch.com). Postcombustion, the absorption of…
On July 11, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA; Washington, D.C.) released an Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPR) soliciting public input on the effects of climate change and the potential ramifications of the Clean Air Act in relation to…
The high salt concentrations, extreme pH values and high temperatures required in biotechnological research on extremophiles and marine organisms cause corrosion in the stainless-steel components of common fermenters. To enable further process development in these areas, Bioengineering AG (Wald, Switzerland;…
A thermochemical process for converting biomass to ethanol, other biofuels and chemical intermediates will be developed jointly by Dow Chemical Co. (Midland, Mich.; www.dow.com) and the U.S. Dept. of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL, Golden, Colo.; www.nrel.gov). Under the…