Lummus Technology, a CB&I company (The Woodlands, Tex.; www.cbi.com) and SYN Energy Technology Co. (Dalian, China; www.syn.ac.cn) have signed a global, cooperative market agreement to license a methanol-to-olefins (MTO) process. The technology, called DMTO, was developed by the Dalian…
Researchers at the Nanotube Research Center of the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST; Tokyo; www.aist.go.jp) have developed a process for making organic nanotubes of metal complexes (photo, left). The scientists have produced organic nanotubes with metal…
When completed in early 2010, Shell Chemicals’ B.V. (The Hague, Netherlands; www.shell.com) 750,000-m.t./yr facility at the Shell Eastern Petrochemicals Complex in Singapore will be the world’s largest plant to produce mono-ethylene glycol (MEG) using Shell’s Omega process. This plant marks…
Researchers at the U.S. Dept. of Energy’s (DOE; Washington, D.C.) Ames Laboratory (www.ameslab.gov) and Iowa State University (both of Ames, Iowa) have developed a hard, smooth coating that can be applied to industrial equipment, such as pumps, gears and cutting…
Laminar Pipe Flow For steady flow in a pipe (whether laminar or turbulent), a momentum balance on the fluid gives the shear stress at any distance from the pipe centerline. In Equation (1), Φ = P + ρ gz. The…
Lubricant contamination in gearbox bearing housings can substantially reduce gear life. In critical applications, dual-face, magnetic bearing-protector seals will keep contamination out (Figure 1). Dual-face, magnetic bearing protectors are preferred in many difficult applications, such as wet cooling tower gearboxes,…
Mitsubishi Chemical Corp. (Tokyo; www.m-kagaku.co.jp/index_en.htm) has developed a plate-in-frame reactor for performing oxidation reactions, such as for the partial oxidation of propane to form acrylic acid. Because of the reactor’s enhanced heat transfer to the catalyst — sandwiched between the…
AkzoNobel Polymer Chemicals LLC (Chigago, Ill.; www.akzonobel.com/polymer) has launched Perkalite, a new range of synthetic, layered double-hydroxide (LDH) organoclays. With proper compounding, the LDH organoclays delaminate to nanoscale sizes and form a true nanocomposite, says the company. Perkalite nanocomposites feature…
Last month, Uralchem OJSC (Moscow, Russia; www.uralchem.com) started production of a new fertilizer, called ASN 32:0:0:5, at Kirov-Chepetsk Chemical Works, OSJ. Granules of the new ASN formulation have a gradient structure with a high concentration of ammonium sulfate on the…
Tantaline (Lyngby, Demnark; www.tantaline.com) has developed a process that creates a surface alloy of tantalum on a metal substrate (typically stainless steel). As a result, the surface acquires the corrosion resistance of tantalum — the most corrosion resistant metal commercially available…