Produced water from natural gas wells in the Marcellus Shale Deposit is extremely high in total dissolved solids (TDS; levels of 25–35% TDS are common) and barium, making the water difficult to re-use and requiring injection in underground geologic formations.…
While demand for the artificial sweetener xylitol grows, expensive raw materials and low yields have kept production prices high. Now, a new process from S2G BioChem (Vancouver, B.C., Canada; www.s2gbiochem.com) aims to produce xylitol in a more cost-effective way, utilizing…
Natural gas vehicles (NGVs) are attractive because of the low cost and wide availability of natural gas, plus the ability to connect to residential and business gas lines for fueling. Among the challenges for using natural gas as a fuel…
Despite cost hurdles, CO2-capture technologies continue to advance, driven by the critical role of CO 2 capture in achieving emissions-reduction goals Among the possible strategies for addressing climate change risks are CO2-removal approaches, including the capture of CO2 from large…
Hardware improvements and service programs add more value to today’s control valves Chemical processors demand reliability, safety and efficiency when selecting control valves. As a result, there have been significant advances to the equipment, including the use of better materials…
Plant Watch Arkema invests in capacity expansion for biosourced polyamide 11 July 12, 2017 — Arkema (Colombes, France; www.arkema.com) plans to invest around €300 million over five years in the biosourced polyamide 11 chain, building a new production plant in…
Desalination Recently, Formosa Petrochemical Corp. (FPCC; Mailiao, Taiwan; www.fpcc.com.tw) commissioned IDE Technologies (Kadima, Israel; www.ide-tech.com) to build a desalination plant in Yunlin County, Taiwan that will be the first large-scale application for IDE’s high-purity boron-removal process. The three-step process combines…
To provide corrosion protection and long life, steel products are galvanized by immersion into kettles containing molten zinc. These galvanizing kettles need to be checked periodically to monitor rates of corrosion in order to avoid a catastrophic spillage of molten…
Chiyoda Corp. (Yokohama, www.chiyoda-corp.com) has been working on a new naphtha cracking process with the aim of producing more propylene and consuming less energy than existing naphtha thermal-cracking methods. The company has recently developed a new catalyst based on iron-…
Last month, the Precious Metals Chemistry business unit of Umicore AG & Co. KG (Hanau-Wolfgang, Germany; www.pmc.umicore.com) inaugurated its production unit for making trimethylgallium (TMGa) and triethylgallium (TEGa). The new facility uses a new, patented production process to make these…