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Chemical Engineering

Lummus announces cooperation with Synthos for development of biobutadiene technology

Lummus Technology (Houston) announced that its Green Circle business and Synthos S.A. (Oswiecim, Poland) have started collaborating to commercialize Synthos’ biobutadiene technology. The first step of the commercialization program includes the development of a feasibility study for a biobutadiene plant…

Mitsubishi Chemical acquires film coating manufacturer Nakai Industrial

Mitsubishi Chemical Corp. (MCC; Tokyo) has acquired all the shares of Nakai Industrial Co., Ltd., (Kyoto, Japan), a film coating manufacturer, and converted the company into a consolidated subsidiary. Nakai Industrial is a comprehensive coating manufacturer that has built up…

Prime Polymer to build polypropylene plant in Japan

Prime Polymer Co., Ltd., a joint venture between Mitsui Chemicals, Inc. (Tokyo) and Idemitsu Kosan Co.,Ltd. (Tokyo), announced the decision to construct a new polypropylene manufacturing facility as part of its plans for a scrap-and-build-style restructuring of its production system.…

Modular waste-to-energy system is cost-competitive at smaller scales

A newly launched modular waste-to-energy system is capable of delivering off-grid heat and power with competitive economics to a variety of locations, including military bases, remote sites and commercial installations, according to creator Enexor BioEnergy LLC (Franklin, Tenn.; www.enexor.com). Under…

High-temperature heat pump promises significant energy savings

Industrial heat pumps (diagram) are a relatively mature technology that converts low-temperature waste heat into a more usable heat at a higher temperature (above the “pinch point”). However, the technology has been limited to applications of up to 100°C. Now,…

An electrotrophic system that treats swine sewage in one step

Researchers from the Biological Systems Unit at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University (OIST; Japan; www.oist.jp) have developed a bioelectrochemical system that uses bacterial communities to break down organic material from raw wastewater, and removes both nitrates…

Reducing the cost of redox flow batteries

Redox flow batteries (RFBs) are a promising alternative to lithium-ion batteries for storing large quantities of renewable energy (see Chem. Eng., September 2016, pp. 14–20), but they have always been too expensive for the mass market. Now, researchers at the…

Simultaneous desalination and decontamination of water

The purification of seawater and wastewater for agriculture and human consumption is becoming increasingly important in water-scarce regions. Along with the removal of salt, rendering ocean water and wastewater suitable for humans and plants also involves removal of elements that…

A new way to capture CO2 in cement

Technologies designed to capture and store CO2 emissions from industrial operations are rapidly gaining traction, but finding ways to economically utilize the captured CO2 has posed challenges. A team of engineers from the University of California Los Angeles’ (UCLA; www.ucla.edu)…

Facts At Your Fingertips: NFPA 652 and Dust Hazards Analyses

The National Fire Protection Association’s (NFPA; Quincy, Mass.; www.nfpa.org) NFPA 652 (Standard on the Fundamentals of Combustible Dust) creates a single, unified combustible-dust standard that applies to “all facilities and operations that manufacture, process, blend, convey, repackage, generate, or handle…