Latest News
Repsol to install new manufacturing line for recycled plastics at Puertollano Industrial Complex
Repsol S.A. (Madrid, Spain) will install a new recycled plastics production line (Reciclex range) with a capacity to manufacture 25,000 tons per year at its Puertollano Industrial Complex, making this center a benchmark for the circular economy in the Iberian…
Elkem to expand pitch capacity in Brazil
Elkem ASA (Oslo, Norway) has decided to invest around NOK 200 million (around $20 million) to increase its production capacity in Brazil for pitch, a raw material for electrode paste to industrial smelters. The investment is based on well-known technology…
Evonik to expand production capacity of methylmercapto-propionaldehyde
Evonik Industries (Essen, Germany) has invested €25 million developing and expanding its methylmercapto-propionaldehyde (MMP) production plant in Wesseling, Germany, in the latest move to strengthen its world-scale global methionine production network. MMP is integral in the production of MetAMINO (DL-methionine)…
Blue-White Industries appoints new executives
The Board of Directors of Blue-White Industries (Huntington Beach, Calif.) elected two new officers in their 2023 First Quarter Meeting. The Board voted Unanimously to appoint Bill McDowell to the position of Chief Operating Officer, and Patrick Murphy as Vice…
Scaleup for an ethanol-to-ethylene process
Last May, Axens (Rueil-Malmaison, France; www.axens.net) started up the first ethanol-to-ethylene pilot plant based on Axen’s Atol technology with Sumitomo Chemical Co., Ltd. (Tokyo, Japan; www.sumitomo-chem.co.jp). The pilot plant, located at Sumitomo Chemical’s Chiba Works, will produce ethylene from ethanol.…
Chementator briefs
Magnet Metals Bilfinger SE (Mannheim, Germany; www.bilfinger.com) is supporting REEtec AS (Oslo, Norway; www.reetec.no) with engineering, procurement, construction and management (EPCM) services for a new processing plant for neodymium and praseodymium — two rare earth elements (REE) used in the…
A more stable way to upcycle waste plastics
A new advanced recycling process simplifies the task of breaking down polymer chains and stabilizing the resulting fragments. The Hydrochemolytic technology (HCT), developed by Aduro Clean Technologies, Inc. (Sarnia, Ont., Canada; www.adurocleantech.com), involves processing waste plastic with water, an inexpensive…
Harvesting hydrogen from humid air
Chemical engineers from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL; www.epfl.ch), in collaboration with scientists from Toyota Motor Europe (Zaventem, Belgium; www.toyota-europe.com), have invented a photoelectrochemical (PEC) “artificial leaf” that splits water vapor into H2. The technology features a…
Hydrothermal synthesis of cobalt-free lithium-ion-battery cathodes
Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE; Washington, D.C.; www.energy.gov) Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL; Oak Ridge, Tenn.; www.ornl.gov) have developed a hydrothermal-synthesis method for high-voltage lithium-ion battery cathodes that avoids several key issues with traditional battery processing. Key…
Carbon sequestration in synthetic construction aggregate
Blue Planet Systems (Los Gatos, Calif.; www.blueplanetsystems.com) and Sulzer Chemtech Ltd. (Winterthur, Switzerland; www.sulzer.com) have announced a partnership to accelerate development of Blue Planet’s process for mineralizing carbon dioxide gas into construction aggregate for concrete. By sequestering CO2 into the…