DuPont (Wilmington, Del.; www.dupont.com) and NexSteppe (Malibu, Calif.; www.nexsteppe.com) have entered into a collaboration to develop advanced feedstocks for biofuels, biopower and biobased products. The collaboration will focus on the development of new sweet sorghum and high biomass sorghum hybrids,…
Neste Oil Oyj (Uusimaa; www.nesteoil.com) has selected Neste Jacobs Oy (Porvoo, both Finland; www.nestejacobs.com) as its main partner for a pilot plant designed to produce waste-based microbial oil at its Porvoo refinery. It will be the first pilot plant in…
BASF SE (Ludwigshafen, Germany; www.basf.com) is participating with $30 million through BASF Biorenewable Beteiligungs GmbH & Co. KG in the American technology firm Renmatix Inc. (King of Prussia, Pa.; www.renmatix.com). The BASF subsidiary led a $50 million financing round, joined…
January 1, 2012 marked the launch of the new TU Delft Process Technology Institute. All Delft University of Technology (TU Delft; the Netherlands; www.tudelft.nl) research in the field of process technology will be integrated in this institute. “What makes this…
[The following originally appeared in the January 2012 Letters page] The Chemical Engineer ( tce) for the past two years has run a series of articles in which it profiles some of the most interesting chemical engineers. At the end…
KBR (Houston; www.kbr.com) was awarded a contract by Tecnimont S.p.A. (Rome, Italy; www.mairetecnimont.it) for the license and basic engineering design (BED) of a new ammonia plant to be built by Chemical Industries Holding Co. (Kima) in Aswan, Egypt. The plant…
Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd. (MHI; Tokyo, Japan; www.mhi.co.jp) has delivered a large-capacity energy-storage system employing lithium-ion rechargeable batteries to the Shimizu Institute of Technology in Tokyo. The institute, a technology arm of Shimizu Corp., a major Japanese construction firm, is…
SNC-Lavalin, Inc. (Montreal, Canada; www.snclavalin.com) has been awarded a contract by MacKay Operating Corp. to provide detailed engineering and procurement services for the MacKay River Central Plant Project. The central processing plant will be designed to process 35,000 barrels per…
KBR (Houston; www.kbr.com) has been awarded a contract by First Global Co. to revamp the North Fertilizer Plant in Baiji, Iraq. Under the terms of the contract, KBR will provide a license for its proprietary ammonia process and related engineering…
Haldor Topsøe A/S (Lyngby, Denmark; www.topsoe.com) has signed a contract with the Russian company JSC Acron for the design of a 2,060 metric tons per day (m.t./d) ammonia plant. The plant will be located in Veliky Novgorod, where an ammonia…