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,…
As chemical engineers, many of us work on developing new processes or improving current ones, often with goals of better efficiency, new or improved products and more sustainability. Taking concepts and laboratory work to a commercial scale requires significant effort,…
Existing methane fuel cells typically require high (750–800°C) temperatures to activate methane in a separate methane reformer that creates hydrogen gas. Now researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech; Atlanta; www.gatech.edu) have developed a solid oxide fuel cell…
Microbial electrochemical reduction (MER) of CO2 into value-added chemicals is a potential way to curb greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. MER uses chemolithoautotrophs, which are microbes found in the deep sea, in caves and in hydrothermal vents. These bacteria get their…
Efforts to find more environmentally friendly anti-scalant approaches have yielded a new form of functionalized nanocellulose that can prevent the nucleation and growth of calcium carbonate, the most common component of industrial scale. Based on the biopolymer cellulose, the anti-scaling…