Latest News
Arkema acquires adhesives manufacturer in Spain
Arkema (Colombes, France; www.arkema.com) is expanding in engineering adhesives with the announcement of the acquisition of Afinitica, a Spanish company specializing in instant adhesives, also known as cyanoacrylates. This small targeted acquisition will enable Arkema’s Bostik brand to develop a…
Lonza sells its Water Care business for $630 million
Lonza Group (Basel, Switzerland; www.lonza.com) and Platinum Equity jointly announced that Platinum Equity has entered into a definitive agreement with Lonza to acquire Lonza's Water Care business and operations for $630 million. The inclusion of the French business in this…
Recently Published Books for the CPI: November 2018
The following recently published books are relevant to the chemical process industries (CPI): Membrane-Based Salinity Gradient Processes for Water Treatment and Power Generation. Edited by Sarper Sarp and Nidal Hilal, Elsevier Press, 2018, 366 pages, $187.00. Bow Ties in Risk…
Sonatrach to use Honeywell technologies to make MTBE in Algeria
Honeywell says that Sonatrach S.p.A. will use a suite of Honeywell UOP (Des Plaines, Ill.; www.uop.com) technologies to produce 200,000 metric tons per year of methyl tert-butyl ether (MTBE), a high-octane gasoline additive that reduces emissions in automobile exhaust. Honeywell…
Brewing Technology: An Old Art Looks Forward
Research and development in the brewing industry is peaking, driven by efforts to improve quality, efficiency and sustainability Within the chemical process industries (CPI), the brewing industry is among the sectors with the deepest historical roots and the most entrenched…
Gas-solid reaction makes efficient solar cells
The research group of Yabing Qi at Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST; Japan; https://groups.oist.jp/emssu), in collaboration with Shengzhong Liu at Shaanxi Normal University, China, has developed a simple method to fabricate thin (1µm) perovskite films that can be…
Engineering Challenges? There’s a Mobile Application for That
Mobile applications for the CPI simplify process engineering challenges and enhance plant optimization Most everyone recalls the Apple tagline boasting, “There’s an app for that.” It appears Apple was ahead of its time; today, there really is an application (app)…
Two new catalysts for continuous-flow synthesis
Shu Kobayashi and colleagues at the University of Tokyo (Japan; www.chem.s.u-tokyo.ac.jp) reported on two new catalysts for synthesizing fine chemicals using their continuous-flow reactor system. The first technology is a novel methodology using CsF.Al2O3 as a highly efficient, environmentally benign,…
Plant Watch: November 2018
Plant Watch Covestro to invest €1.5 billion in new, world-scale MDI plant in Baytown October 9, 2018 — Covestro AG (Leverkusen, Germany; www.covestro.com) approved an investment of around €1.5 billion to build a new methylene diphenyl diisocyanate (MDI) plant in…
Chementator Briefs
O2 recycling A beta field trial has been successfully completed for an adsorption-based technology designed to separate unreacted oxygen in ozone-generating systems. The technology, known as Ozora, was developed by Linde LLC (Bridgewater, N.J.; www.lindeus.com), and was originally launched last…