Technip (Paris, France; www.technip.com) was awarded a contract by Westlake Chemical Corp. (Houston; www.westlake.com) to provide detailed engineering and procurement services to expand the recovery section of Westlake’s Petro 1 ethylene plant at its complex in Sulphur, Louisiana, USA. Technip’s operating…
Haldor Topsøe A/S (Lyngby, Denmark; www.topsoe.com) today announced that Huineng, a large-scale substitute natural gas (SNG) plant, went successfully on-stream near the city of Ordos, located in Inner Mongolia in the northern part of China. Topsøe has designed the methanation…
BP plc (London, U.K.; www.bp.com) has announced that it plans to invest over $200 million to upgrade its purified terephthalic acid (PTA) plants at Cooper River, South Carolina and Geel, Belgium. The investments will position these assets amongst the most…
Royal DSM (Heerlen, the Netherlands; www.dsm.com) has opened its new center for research and development of high-performance materials on the Brightlands Chemelot Campus in Sittard-Geleen, the Netherlands. The completion of DSM’s largest materials center worldwide is part of the €100-million…
A seven-person investigation team from the U.S. Chemical Safety Board (CSB; www.csb.gov) is deploying to the scene of a fatal chemical release at the La Porte DuPont Plant located near Houston, Texas. According to DuPont officials, there was a release…
Outotec Oyj (Espoo, Finland; www.outotec.com) has been awarded a contract by BCL Ltd. for modernizing the nickel flash smelting furnace in Selebi Phikwe, Botswana. In addition, the parties have made a service level agreement for the operation and maintenance for…
Thomas Swan & Co. (Consett, U.K.; www.thomas-swan.co.uk) has announced that they have successfully secured four government grants for graphene-related projects within the program “Realizing the Graphene Revolution” launched by Innovate UK. The lead participants in the program are Sharp Laboratories of…
Starting in 2015, The Dow Chemical Company (Midland, Mich.; www.dow.com) plans to expand capacity and enhance production technologies and equipment at its four polyethylene (PE) production units located in Bahia Blanca, Argentina: Low-density (LDPE), Slurry, Gas-phase, and Solution. These investments…
Praxair, Inc. (Danbury, Conn.; www.praxair.com) has signed a longterm contract to provide hydrogen to Repsol, one of the world’s largest producers of petrochemicals. The new steam methane reformer (SMR) will be constructed at Repsol’s La Pampilla petroleum refinery, in the…
Total Energy Ventures, the venture capital arm of Total S.A. (Paris, France; www.total.com), is investing in Aquion Energy (Pittsburgh, Pa.; www.aquionenergy.com), a start-up specialized in energy storage technology. Aquion Energy develops and manufactures energy storage systems, especially for renewable energies…