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Commercialization is set for a cellulose-to-ethanol process

What is billed as the first commercial-scale plant to produce ethanol from cellulosic feed will be built in Treutlen County, Georgia, by Range Fuels, Inc. (Broomfield, Colo.; edlinks.chemengonline.com/6898-541). The company received a construction permit from the State of Georgia last…

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Major M&As

Last month, Hexion Specialty Chemicals, Inc. (Columbus, Ohio; edlinks.chemengonline.com/6898-546) signed a definitive agreement to acquire Huntsman Corp. (Salt Lake City, Utah) in an all-cash transaction valued at approximately $10.6 billion, including the assumption of debt. Huntsman has terminated its previous…

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Sugar-to-PE

Dow Chemical Co. (Midland, Mich.; edlinks.chemengonline.com/6898-548) and Crystalsev (São Paulo, Brazil; edlinks.chemengonline.com/6898-549) are forming a joint venture in Brazil to design and build the first integrated facility of its scale in the world for making polyethylene (PE) from sugar cane.…

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Printed electronics

Solvay Solexis, a subsidiary of Solvay S.A. (Brussels, Belgium; edlinks.chemengonline.com/6898-554), and Thin Film Electronics ASA (Oslo, Norway) are cooperating to develop materials for the production of printed electronics devices.The aim of the joint-development program is to optimize ferroelectric-polymer materials to…

Calendar – August

    NORTH AMERICA   Corrosion Solutions 2007 6th International Conference. ATI Wah Chang Allegheny Technologies. (Pittsburgh, Pa.). Phone: 541-926-4211 ext. 6280; Fax: 541-924-6892; Web: corrosionconference.com Sunriver, Oreg. Sept. 9–13   Micro Nano Breakthrough Conference. Oregon Nanoscience and Microtechnologies Institute.…

August Who’s Who

Ravi Uppal is promoted to head of global markets for ABB (Zurich, Switzerland). Ashland, Inc. (Dublin, Ohio) names David K. Jones director of bioproducts.  Jean Philippe LeCointe  becomes technical service manager for European composite transportation business of Ashland Composite Polymers.…

A Primer on Patent Law

    Chemical engineers, whether directly engaged in R&D or not, routinely deal with situations that are new and different, not only to them, but to those in the chemical process industries (CPI) as a whole. Quite often, the way…

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August Plant Watch & Business News

  Plant Watch Huntsman signs agreement to host new biodiesel plant July 19, 2007 — Huntsman Corp. announced it has reached agreement with RBF Port Neches LLC (“RBF”) to operate a newly constructed biodiesel plant to be located at Huntsman’s…

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A sound way to monitor fermentation

The traditional way to check microbial growth in a fermentation process is to take a sample of slurry and analyze it in the laboratory, a procedure that is less than ideal because of the time delay in obtaining the information.…

Happy Days are Here Again

    While statistics from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS; Washington, D.C.; www.bls.gov) and trends reported by the American Chemistry Council (ACC; Arlington, Va.; www.americanchemistry.com) suggest chemical engineers seeking work may be singing the blues, chemical processors and…