In The News
Business News Roundup: December 2022
Plant Watch Solvay resumes soda-ash expansion in Wyoming November 11, 2022 — Solvay S.A. (Brussels, Belgium; www.solvay.com) plans to resume the construction of its soda-ash capacity expansion in Green River, Wyo. The investment totals around $200 million, and the expansion…
Supercritical extraction drives ‘molecular washing machine’ for plastic waste
A new recycling process has been developed for scrap polypropylene (PP), a waste stream that is currently underserved by many plastics-recycling facilities. The process, developed by PureCycle (Orlando, Fla.; www.purecycle.com), aims to “wash the plastic molecules” using a series of…
New smelting furnace enables the use of lower-grade ore in DRI ironmaking
In late October, Metso Outotec Corp. (Helsinki, Finland; www.mogroup.com) introduced the DRI (direct reduced iron) Smelting Furnace to substitute blast furnaces used in iron- and steelmaking. The furnace was developed to tolerate high-slag volumes, which are problematic for a conventional…
Making more from mining water with electrowinning
A new electrowinning process is being field-trialed at the Prieska copper-zinc mine operated by Orion Minerals Ltd. (Melbourne, Australia; www.orionminerals.com.au) in South Africa, which will enable the production of valuable products, including calcium, magnesium, iron and others, from contaminated mine…
This batch reactor saves time, energy, space and more
Batch reactors are widely used throughout the chemical process industries (CPI), and the basic design has not radically changed for many decades. Nevertheless, precise temperature control of batch processes continues to be a common problem. Now, a new design of…
Selective production of MEG from CO2 in a single step
The startup company RenewCO2 (Piscataway, N.J.; www.renewco2.com) has developed a catalyzed electrochemical process for selectively producing monoethylene glycol (MEG) in a single step using byproduct carbon dioxide from other processes as feedstock. MEG is important industrially because it is the…
World’s largest AEM electrolyzer launched in California
An emerging electrolyzer technology for renewable hydrogen production is the anion-exchange membrane (AEM), which provides efficiency and cost benefits over other electrolyzer configurations. Until now, most AEM installations have been small, as the membrane assemblies’ size and durability limited the…
Chementator Briefs
Catalysts by AM In late September, BASF SE (Ludwigshafen, Germany; www.basf.com) introduced X3D, a new additive-manufacturing (AM; 3D printing) technology for shaping catalysts. Catalysts produced with this technology feature an open structure, resulting in a reduction of the pressure drop…
Engineering duckweed to increase oil production
Scientists at the U.S. Dept. of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL; Upton, N.Y.; www.bnl.gov) and collaborators at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL; Laurel Hollow, N.Y.; www.cshl.edu) have genetically engineered a strain of duckweed (Lemna japonica) to produce high yields of…
A process for making improved composite insulation material
Hollow silica particles (HSPs) are materials of interest for thermal insulation applications because of their very low thermal conductivity, but the particles pose health hazards and the powder is impractical to use, so scientists have been trying to incorporate HSPs…