In The News
A new thermoplastic
GE Plastics (Pittsfield, Mass.; edlinks.chemengonline.com/6891-543) has launched Extem thermoplastic polyimide (TPI) resins, a new family of amorphous polymers. The new resin is said to overcome the drawbacks of semicrystalline materials, imidized thermosets and competitive amorphous thermoplastics. Among Extem resin’s properties…
Interoperability in control systems
Samson AG (Frankfurt, Germany; edlinks.chemengonline.com/6891-545) has started to implement the Vigilant Integration Partners (VIP) initiative, having entered a formal cooperation agreement with Yokogawa Electric Corp. (Tokyo; edlinks.chemengonline.com/6891-546). The VIP initiative is an open and non-exclusive mutual technology cooperation program to…
A new business unit for UOP
Last month, UOP LLC (Des Plaines, Ill.; edlinks.chemengonline.com/6519-544) established a new business unit — Renewable Energy and Chemicals — dedicated to introducing new technology for processing renewable energy sources in existing or new petroleum refineries around the world. The new…
Uhde to build the world’s first integrated facility to make biodiesel and fattyalcohols
Last month, Thai Oleochemicals Company Ltd. (TOL; Bangkok, Thailand) and Thai Fatty Alcohols Company Ltd. signed a contract with Uhde GmbH (Dortmund, Germany; edlinks.chemengonline.com/6518-531) for the construction of an integrated plant for making 200,000 m.t./yr of methyl ester, 100,000 m.t./yr…
Gasification
Last month, China’s third largest oil company, CNOOC, and Choren Industries GmbH (Freiberg, Germany; edlinks.chemengonline.com/6518-548) launched a new joint venture — Choren-CNOOC Beijing Gasification Engineering Technology Co. Ltd. (edlinks.chemengonline.com/6518-549) — to market technologies for gasifying solid feedstock, such as coal…
A commercial debut for a process to make silicon for solar cells
This month, JFE Steel Corp. (Tokyo, Japan; edlinks.chemengonline.com/6517-532) started up a new production plant that produces 100 m.t./yr of solar-grade (SOG) silicon (Si) from crude Si metal. The company also started to design a 500-1,000-m.t./yr plant for making SOG Si,…
Ti powder
The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Arlington, Va.) has awarded $5.7 million to a two-company consortium to develop an inexpensive and energy-efficient process for making titanium metal powder. Such powders can be used to make strong, lightweight objects, such…
Industrial gas deal
On September 5, Linde AG (Wiesbaden, Germany; edlinks.chemengonline.com/6517-547) and the BOC Group plc. (Windlesham, U.K.; edlinks.chemengonline.com/6517-548) merged to become one of the leading industrial gases and engineering companies. The new company is called The Linde Group (Munich, Germany), but the…
HF effluent treatment
Last month, BOC Edwards (Wilmington, Mass.; edlinks.chemengonline.com/6517-549) completed installations of its new ERIX wastewaster treatment system at the College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering, of the University of Albany's Albany NanoTech complex (N.Y.). The installation is a development step towards…
Chementator: Hybrid power plant
Energie Baden-Württemberg AG (EnBW; Karlsruhe) and Siemens Power Generation (Erlangen, both Germany; edlinks.chemengonline.com/6517-550) are joining forces to build a fuel-cell hybrid power plant with 70% efficiency (fuel to electricity) and a megawatt-scale power output. The 70% efficiency of this hybrid…