Owens Corning (Toledo, Ohio; www.owenscorning.com) announced that it has signed an agreement to acquire Pittsburgh Corning, a leading producer of cellular glass insulation systems for commercial and industrial markets. Upon closing, the company will pay approximately $560 million in cash,…
The American Chemistry Council’s (ACC; Washington, D.C.; www.americanchemistry.com) Global Chemical Production Regional Index (Global CPRI) shows that global chemicals production rose 0.1 percent in April after a revised flat performance in March, as measured on a three-month moving average (3MMA)…
BASF SE (Lugwigshafen, German; www.basf.com) and Sinopec will expand the capacity of existing propionic acid production with an additional 30,000 metric tons per year (m.t./yr) at their state-of-the-art Verbund site, BASF-YPC Company Limited, a 50-50 joint venture (JV) in Nanjing,…
Much hard work goes into developing new processes and products, and few of these developments make it to commercialization. Those innovative technologies that have been commercialized are honored by Chemical Engineering through the Kirkpatrick Chemical Engineering Achievement Award, which is…
Atmospheric Storage Tanks This refers to the [Engineering Practice] article “Designing Atmospheric Storage Tanks” [March 2017, pp. 77–82]. It is interesting and informative. Please convey my congratulations to the author. Some of the suggested methods may lead to expensive designs…
An international group of researchers, coordinated by the Institute of Solar Research of the German Aerospace Center e.V. (DLR; Cologne, Germany; www.dlr.de), is developing a sulfur-based storage system for solar power. Large-scale chemical storage of solar power and its overnight…
Efficient distillation Last month, Toyo Engineering Corp. (Toyo; Chiba, www.toyo-eng.co.jp) and Koch-Glitsch, LP (Wichita, Kan.; www.koch-glitsch.com) announced a new partnership to distribute Toyo’s energy-saving distillation system, SuperHIDiC, to new global markets in Europe and the Middle East. SuperHIDiC provides energy…
The New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO, Kawasaki City; Japan; www.nedo.go.jp), in partnership with Japan Technological Research Assn. of Artificial Photosynthetic Chemical Process (ARPChem) members, Mitsubishi Chemical Corp. and the Tokyo Institute of Technology, has developed a hyperstable…
Researchers from the Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (Ulsan; www.unist.ac.kr) have found a new way to increase the energy efficiency of metal-air batteries — which are next-generation energy devices — by adding the conducting polymer polypyrrole (pPy). According…
Recovery of the essential plant nutrient phosphorus from wastewater can be an effective way to reduce runoff into waterways while avoiding the need to obtain the element from mined minerals. While phosphorus recovery from wastewater effluent performs well, it is…