Chemical Engineering
Plant Watch: December 2024
Plant Watch Evonik breaks ground on specialty-amine production plant in Nanjing November 11, 2024 — Evonik Industries AG (Essen, Germany; www.evonik.com) has broken ground on its plant expansion for specialty amines in Nanjing, China. The Nanjing plant specializes in producing…
Chem Chronicles: A Look Back on 80 years of Thin-Film Evaporation
Eighty years ago, in 1944, Dr. Hans Müller from Winterthur, Switzerland filed a patent application for a device designed to process liquid substances at the Swiss Federal Institute of Intellectual Property in Bern. Liquids prone to fouling on heated surfaces,…
Chementator Briefs: December 2024
Sustainable SMR In the pursuit of lowering greenhouse gas emissions, hydrogen has gained much attention as a potentially “clean” energy source. Typically, hydrogen is produced by steam methane reforming (SMR), a process which itself produces greenhouse gases. Efforts to lower…
A more mechanical method for methanol manufacture
The demand for “green” methanol as a low-carbon fuel is rising, making it a valuable commodity, as well as a promising avenue for waste-carbon utilization, especially since it can be readily produced from “stranded” carbon sources, such as flare gas.…
Successful pilot study of wastewater reuse technology at commercial site
A pilot project evaluating the Electro-Ceramic Desalination (ECD) technology developed by Membrion Inc. (Seattle, Wash.; www.membrion.com) successfully recovered clean water from the reject water of a reverse osmosis (RO) desalination process at a commercial manufacturing site. Membrion’s technology uses ceramic…
A more economical process for bio-succinic acid piloted
Bio-based succinic acid has been explored as a renewable building-block for a host of chemicals and polymers, but its production process remains costly due largely to the complicated purification process that generates a large waste stream. Now, researchers at the…
Fujifilm Diosynth Biotechnologies completes expansion at manufacturing site in California
Fujifilm Diosynth Biotechnologies, a contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO) for biologics, vaccines, advanced therapies, and oncolytic viruses, announced the completion of an expansion of its cell-therapy manufacturing facility in Thousand Oaks, California. The event also celebrated the recent European…
Honeywell to sell PPE business for $1.3 billion
Honeywell International, Inc. (Charlotte, N.C.) announced that it has agreed to sell its Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) business to Protective Industrial Products, Inc. (PIP), a portfolio company of Odyssey Investment Partners, for $1.325 billion in an all-cash transaction. The transaction…
KBR to supply technology for new ammonia plant in Angola
KBR, Inc. (Houston) announced that it has signed an agreement with AMUFERT for the development of a new ammonia plant in Soyo, Angola. Under the terms of the contract, KBR will provide a technology license, proprietary engineering design, equipment and…
Solvay inaugurates second biomass boiler at Rheinberg soda ash and bicarbonate plant
Solvay S.A. (Brussels, Belgium) announces the official inauguration of the second biomass boiler at its Rheinberg soda ash and bicarbonate plant in Germany, phasing out the use of thermal coal for energy use at the site. With the commissioning of…