Last month, Toyo Engineering Corp. (Toyo; Chiba, www.toyo-eng.co.jp) was awarded a contract for a distillation column in a methyl ethyl ketone (MEK) production plant of Maruzen Petrochemical Co. (Ichihara City, Chiba, Japan). The contract marks the first commercial application of…
Changing markets and new applications are putting more demands on the protective coatings industry than ever before. While developing environmentally friendlier and less labor-intensive corrosion- and chemical-resistant paints and coatings is always a major goal, new formulations are needed to…
A collaboration between LanzaTech (Skokie, Ill.; www.lanzatech.com) and the IOC-DBT Center for Advanced Bio-Energy Research (Faridabad, India; www.iocl.com) has led to a carbon-capturing process that synthesizes omega-3 lipids in algae. Via a continuous fermentation step that takes place in a…
A process that continuously produces methanol from methane is being developed by the Gas Technology Institute (GTI; Des Plaines, Ill.; www.gastechnology.org), with support from the U.S. Dept. of Energy’s (Washington, D.C.) Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E). The process operates at…
A new lithium-ion battery that can be recharged in only two minutes — 20 times faster than with current technology — has been developed by scientists from Nanyang Technological University (Singapore; www.ntu.edu.sg). The battery will also have a lifespan of…
Protective-enclosure maker Intertec Inc. (Sarnia, Ont.; www.intertec.info) is building a unique, explosion-proof, pressurized shelter for a granulated urea warehouse at what will be the world’s largest, single-stream, gas-to-urea plant in Nigeria. The three-section enclosure protects personnel and electronics from potentially…
New techniques and equipment for manufacturing cast components made from beryllium-aluminum alloys can reduce the cost significantly, allowing the high-performance materials to be considered for a wide range of applications beyond their initial uses in the aerospace industry. Beryllium-aluminum alloys…
Significant improvements to a process to extract vanadium, titanium and iron from the Mount Peake Vanadium-Titanium-Iron Project in the Northern Territory of Australia will be tested in a pilot plant now under construction and nearing completion. Results of the pilot-plant…
The Capitol SkyMine project in San Antonio, Tex. utilizes fluegas from an existing cement plant to manufacture salable chemicals while preventing the CO2 from reaching the atmosphere. Built by Skyonic Corp. (Austin, Tex.; www.skyonic.com), the project is said to be…
Division Radomiro Tomic of Codelco (Codelco Corporación Nacional del Cobre de Chile; Santiago; www.codelco.www) is adopting a bioleaching process to recover copper from low-grade ores. The process was developed by BioSigma S.A. — a joint venture (JV) of JX Nippon…