Indorama Ventures Public Company Limited (IVL; Bangkok, Thailand; www.indoramaventures.com) announced the commencement of commercial production of purified isophthalic acid (PIA) plant at Indorama Ventures Xylenes & PTA, LLC, located at Decatur, Alabama, USA The Decatur PIA plants complement IVL’s existing…
Saudi International Petrochemical Company (Sipchem; Al Khobar, Saudi Arabia; www.sipchem.com) is pleased to announce that the ethylene vinyl acetate (EVA) Film Plant, owned by Saudi Specialized Products Company (SSPC), an affiliate of Sipchem, commenced commercial operations on January 1, 2019.…
PolyOne Corp. (Cleveland, Ohio; www.polyone.com) announced the acquisition of Fiber-Line (Hatfield, Pa.; www.fiber-line.com), a global leader in customized engineered fibers and composite materials for $120 million. Founded in 1987, Fiber-Line has utilized its customer-centric culture and specialty innovation to establish…
Indorama Ventures Public Company Limited (IVL; Bangkok, Thailand; www.indoramaventures.com) has entered into an agreement to acquire a polyethylene terephthalate (PET) recycling facility from Custom Polymers PET in Alabama, U.S. The facility consists of two production lines; Recycled Polyethylene Terephthalate (rPET)…
Eni S.p.A. (Rome, Italy; www.eni.com) announced that Syndial, Eni’s environmental services company, has begun operating at its pilot plant at the Gela refinery in Sicily, Italy. The plant transforms Organic Fraction of Municipal Solid Waste (OFMSW) by recycling it into bio-oil, which…
Saudi Aramco (Dhahran, Saudi Arabia; www.saudiaramco.com) and Lanxess AG (Cologne, Germany; www.lanxess.com) announced the completion of Saudi Aramco’s acquisition of LANXESS‘s interest in ARLANXEO Holding B.V., a Netherlands-based specialty chemicals joint venture between Saudi Aramco and LANXESS launched in 2016.…
DuPont Transportation & Advanced Polymers (T&AP), a global business unit of the DowDuPont’s (www.dow-dupont.com) Specialty Products Division, recently announced its intention to extend its High Temperature Nylon (DuPont Zytel HTN PPA) polymerization capacity at Uentrop facility in Hamm, Germany. With…
The following is a list of recently published books of relevance for chemical process industries (CPI) professionals Picturing Science and Engineering: A guide to making scientific photographs for presentations, journal submissions and covers. By Felice C. Frankel, MIT Press,…
This column is based on “HDPE Production via Slurry Loop Process – Cost Analysis,” published by Intratec. The report can be found at the following URL: www.intratec.us/analysis/hdpe-production-cost. High-density polyethylene (HDPE) is one of the three main types of polyethylene, and…
Surprising observations regarding flooding in the upper fractionation trays of an atmospheric crude-petroleum distillation column are investigated In industial distillation processes, flooding is an abnormal, but relatively common, process condition in which liquid accumulates in the column. The accumulation may…