New pump technologies offer better containment and reliability to keep product flowing safely and efficiently Because moving hazardous or high-value product through the process in a cost-effective manner is the name of the game in today’s chemical process industries (CPI),…
Researchers from Penn State University (State College, Pa.; www.psu.edu) and Dalian University of Technology (Dalian, China; www.dlut.edu.cn) have improved the CO2-to-methanol process by using a catalyst that combines copper and palladium. Using a palladium-to-copper atomic ratio range of 0.3 to…
Later this year (Q4 2018), APK AG (Merseburg, Germany; www.apk-ag.de) will start up the first commercial plant to recycle multilayer packaging using the company’s solvent-based Newcycling process. The plant will process 8,000 metric tons per year (m.t./yr) of post-industrial multilayer…
A new pilot project brings together advanced membrane filtration with non-thermal, zero-liquid-discharge (ZLD) solvent exchange to efficiently treat high-salinity produced water from oil-and-gas operations. PetroH2O Recovery (Southlake, Tex.; www.petroh2o.com) is currently building a pilot plant with the capacity to process…
Plant Watch Asahi Kasei to install alkaline-water electrolysis system for Toshiba Energy August 13, 2018 — Asahi Kasei Corp. (Tokyo, Japan; www.asahi-kasei.co.jp) received an order from Toshiba Energy Systems & Solutions Corp. (Kanagawa, Japan; www.toshiba-energy.com) for a 10-MW single-unit alkaline-water-electrolysis…
Splitting water with sunlight is a sustainable and environmentally friendly way to make hydrogen, but the conversion efficiency is presently very low, because current photocatalysts only work using ultraviolet radiation — a small fraction (3–5%) of sunlight. Now, a promising…
Bio-isoprene Yokohama Rubber Co. (Tokyo, Japan; www.yokohama.com) has developed what is said to be the world’s first technology capable of efficiently producing isoprene from biomass. The new breakthrough is the result of joint research with Riken (www.riken.jp) and Zeon Corp.…
Plant-based extracts, such as antioxidants, phytochemicals and polyphenols, are used in a number of end-markets, including cosmetics, foods and nutritional supplements. A proprietary, low-polarity, pressurized-water extraction method is set to drastically improve the recovery of useful ingredients from botanical sources.…
Almost all phosphoric acid is produced via the wet-acid process (WAP), which requires relatively pure raw materials and produces large volumes of a potentially hazardous, special waste called phosphogypsum, which is highly regulated in terms of storage and disposal. A…
In a first-of-its-kind endeavor, a hydrogen-fluoride-based alkylation unit producing linear alkyl benzene (LAB) is being converted into a solid-bed alkylation unit that employs UOP’s (Des Plaines, Ill.; www.uop.com) Detal-Plus alkylation technology for LAB. LAB is used in the production of…