The International Petroleum Investment Company (Abu Dhabi, U.A.E) and Borealis AG (www.borealisgroup.com) have signed a memorandum of understanding along with Abu Dhabi Investment Council to prepare jointly for the first phase of the development of a planned new Chemicals Industrial…
KBR (Houston, Tex.; www.kbr.com) has been awarded a contract by Ningbo Wanhua Polyurethanes Co. to provide the technology and basic engineering for a 360,000-m.t./yr aniline plant. Once complete, Wanhua's aniline plant will be the largest in China and the largest…
Fuel cells and hydrogen economy are inevitably used in the same breath when talking about clean power and ways to wean us from our addiction to carbon-based fuels. That’s because H2 -based fuel cells make electricity and heat with only…
Plant Watch Dynamotive in advanced negotiations for Biooil plant February 14, 2008 — Dynamotive USA, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Dynamotive Energy Systems Corp., is in negotiations with officials to ascertain the feasibility of locating one or more "fast-pyrolysis"…
The Seebeck effect — the direct conversion of a temperature difference to electricity — is responsible for the operation of thermocouples. But taking advantage of this phenomenon to make electricity from waste heat in so-called thermoelectric (TE) devices has been…
Synfuels International, Inc. (Dallas, Tex.; edlinks.chemengonline.com/7370-561) plans to commercialize its patented gas-to-liquids (GTL) process in Kuwait through a newly formed partnership with Kuwait’s Aref Energy Holding (edlinks.chemengonline.com/7370-562). In contrast with Fischer-Tropsch technology, the process produces a high-octane gasoline blend, rather…
The standard way to test for toxicity in individuals who have been exposed to heavy metals is to take a blood sample and analyze it in the laboratory by plasma mass spectrometry, an expensive and time-consuming procedure. Now, a portable…
Next month, Taiyo Kagaku Co. (Yokkaichi, Japan; edlinks.chemengonline.com/7370-563) will start up a 20-m.t./yr plant — said to be the world’s first — for the production of mesoporous silica. Taiyo Kagaku developed the new production process based on technology first introduced…
Although nanoporous silica membranes are promising systems for the molecular separation of gases and liquids, they lack microstructural stability in the presence of water at temperatures as low as 60°C. Prolonged exposure to water causes hydrolysis, resulting in the formation…
Alstom Power, Inc. (Windsor, Conn.; edlinks.chemengonline.com/7370-571) and The Dow Chemical Co. (Midland, Mich.; edlinks.chemengonline.com/7370-572) have established a joint development and commercialization agreement for advanced amine scrubbing technology for the removal of carbon dioxide from low-pressure fluegases of fossil-fuel-fired power plants…