Air Products (Lehigh Valley, Pa.; edlinks.chemengonline.com/6894-547) and FuelCell Energy Inc. (Danbury, Conn.; edlinks.chemengonline.com/6894-548) have begun construction on an advanced hydrogen-energy demonstration station. The station, funded in part from the DOE, will demonstrate tri-generation of hydrogen, electric power and heat from…
Dow Chemical Co. (Midland, Mich.; edlinks.chemengonline.com/6894-531) will begin commercial-scale production of Infuse olefin-block copolymers (OBCs), using its Insite technology, in the third quarter of 2007. The company recently completed a trial manufacturing run of OBCs at the plant, which is…
Mitsui Engineering & Shipbuilding Co. (MES; Tokyo, Japan; edlinks.chemengonline.com/6894-540), in cooperation with Chugoku Electric Power Co. (Hiroshima, Japan), is building a pilot plant that will produce 5-m.t./d of natural gas hydrate (NGH). The plant, located at Chugoku Electric's Yanai Power…
Phostech Lithium Inc. (St. Bruno, Canada; edlinks.chemengonline.com/6893-533), an affiliate of Süd-Chemie AG (Munich, Germany), has completed construction of the first large-scale production plant for making lithium iron phosphate (LiFePO4) - a replacement for lithium cobalt oxide that allows larger, safer…
BASF Future Business GmbH (Ludwigshafen, Germany; edlinks.chemengonline.com/6893-536) has entered a licensing and joint-development agreement with Rieke Metals, Inc. (Lincoln, Neb.; edlinks.chemengonline.com/6893-537) and will soon start the industrial-scale production and sales of organic semiconductors (OSCs; polythiophenes). High-purity polythiophenes will be made…
SK Corp. (Seoul, South Korea; edlinks.chemengonline.com/6893-542) has developed a new process to increase the yield of olefins from the catalytic cracking of paraffinic feeds (paraffins-rich naphtha). The Advanced Catalytic Olefin (ACO) process uses a proprietary zeolite-type granular catalyst in a…
Last month, Diversa Corp. (San Diego, Calif.; edlinks.chemengonline.com/6893-546) and Celunol Corp. (Cambridge, Mass.; edlinks.chemengonline.com/6893-547) signed a definitive merger agreement to create what is claimed as a new leader in the emerging cellulose-based ethanol industry. The combined company will be…
Last month, China Petroleum & Chemical Corp. (Sinopec; Beijing; edlinks.chemengonline.com/6893-549) and Syntroleum Corp. (Tulsa, Okla.; edlinks.chemengonline.com/6893-550) signed a memorandum of understanding for a joint technology-development effort tor advanced natural gas-to-liqquids (GTL) and coal-to-liquids (CTL) technologies. Syntroleum will provide its…
DuPont (Wilmington, Del.; edlinks.chemengonline.com/6893-553) has commercialized a patented process that removes more than 97% of trace levels of PFOA (perfluorooctanoic acid), its homologues and direct precursors meeting the voluntary U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA; Washington, D.C.) 2010/15 PFOA Stewardship program…
Stone & Webster International, a business unit of the Shaw Group Inc. (Baton Rouge, La.; edlinks.chemengonline.com/6893-554), has formed a joint venture with Sofcon Consulting Engineering Co. (AI Khobar, Saudi Arabia; edlinks.chemengonline.com/6893-555). The JV, called Shaw Sofcon, combines the process technology…