Plant Watch ADM announces significant expansions in the U.S. and Germany April 14, 2022 — Archer-Daniels-Midland Co. (ADM; Chicago, Ill.; www.adm.com) will invest approximately $300 million to significantly expand its Decatur, Ill., alternative-protein production plant. The project is expected to…
To lower their climate impact, petroleum refiners are increasingly assessing greenhouse-gas-emission intensities as they consider processing lower-carbon feedstocks. One area of particular activity is sustainable aviation fuels (SAF), where demand growth is accelerating While the oil-and-gas industry has been on…
A technology initially developed in Australia by OPEC Systems (Emu Plains, NSW, Australia; www.opecsystems.com) for separating and concentrating per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) in a range of water applications has now been introduced in North America. The technology, known as…
Researchers at Argonne National Laboratory (Lemont, Ill.; www.anl.gov) are investigating an electrochemical separation process known as capacitive deionization (CDI; diagram) to extract and recover ions from liquid streams in wide-ranging applications, including battery recycling and biomanufacturing. CDI holds several advantages…
To ensure product safety and quality, products containing lactose (at dairy plants, for example) are processed under hygienic conditions. These strict hygiene conditions require frequent cleaning of pneumatic transport systems — typically every eight weeks. This procedure is both labor-intensive…
A new category of electrolysis could significantly lower the expenses associated with producing “green” hydrogen. In the new capillary-fed electrolyzer cell — designed by Hysata (Wollongong, Australia; www.hysata.com) based on research from the University of Wollongong (www.uow.edu.au) — water is…
NITROGEN UTILIZATION Late March, the first nitrogen fertilizer produced from a wastewater-treatment plant sidestream was delivered to a farm in Sweden. The fertilizer was produced at a pilot plant that began operation last December at Ragn-Sells Högbytorp’s (www.ragensells.se) wastewater-treatment and…
Before being fed to the blast furnace, iron ore is first converted into pellets by, for example, a traveling-grate (TG) pelletizing plant. In this plant, so-called green pellets are conveyed through a furnace that heats the pellets to high temperatures…
Plant Watch Repsol begins construction of Cartagena biofuels plant March 8, 2022 — Repsol S.A. (Madrid, Spain; www.repsol.com) began construction work on the first advanced biofuels plant in Spain at the company’s Cartagena refinery, which will produce fuels using waste…
Utilizing rare-earth elements (REEs), such as for permanent magnets in renewable energy applications, requires costly chemical separations that generate large volumes of waste. A process featuring new diglycolamide (DGA)-based ligands and liquid-liquid extraction exhibits more effective separation of individual REEs,…