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Mitsubishi Chemical and Linde Engineering enter technology transfer for hydrodealklyation
The Engineering Division of The Linde Group (www.linde-engineering.com) and Mitsubishi Chemical Corp. (MCC; Tokyo; www.m-chemical.co.jp) have concluded a definite agreement for transfer of MCC’s Hydrodealkylation (HDA) technology to Linde. For more than 45 years, MCC’s HDA process has been deployed…
KBR to provide proprietary ammonia technology to PAU in Indonesia
KBR, Inc. (Houston, www.kbr.com) announced that it has entered into an agreement to provide its proprietary Ammonia InSite Technology to PT Panca Amara Utama (PAU) for the Sulawesi, Indonesia ammonia plant complex. Ammonia InSite Technology is a KBR integrated solution…
Valero to use CB&I’s CDAlky technology for St. Charles refinery project
CB&I (The Woodlands, Tex.; www.cbi.com) announced that its CDAlky technology has been selected by Valero Refining – New Orleans LLC for its St. Charles Alkylation Project located in Norco, Louisiana. CB&I's overall scope of supply on the project includes CDAlky…
Recently Published Books for March 2018
The following titles are recently published books with relevance to the chemical process industries (CPI) . . . Carbon Dioxide to Chemicals and Fuels. By Aulice Scibioh and B. Viswanathan, Elsevier, 2018, 510 pages, $170.00. Polymer-based Nanocomposites for Energy…
Solar Chemistry Heats Up
Major efforts are underway to develop new process technology for making chemicals using sunlight and the products of combustion No one can deny that the sun provides more than enough energy to supply the world’s energy and materials needs. After…
A plug for ‘big science’
One of the first experiments I ever conducted in my basement chemistry lab was to split water into hydrogen and oxygen, using the transformer from my train set as the power sup- ply and platinum ribbon strips as electrodes. Although…
Catalytic conversion of sugars to acrylonitrile
Acrylonitrile (ACN) — a precursor in nearly all carbon fibers — is typically produced from propylene and ammonia, but a new method uses biomass-derived second-generation sugars. The process was developed by Southern Research (Durham, N.C.; www.southernresearch.org) and seeks to provide…
An explosive way to make porous organic networks
A team from Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (Ulsan, South Korea; www.unist.ac.kr), led by professor Jong-Beom Baek has introduced a synthetic methodology for fabricating a three-dimensional porous organic network with a high specific surface area via a solid-state…
These highly selective membranes mimic biological ion channels
New membranes developed at Tufts University (Medford, Mass.; www.tufts.edu) can effectively separate similar chemicals based on not only size but on electrostatic charge. “Currently, there are no commercial membranes that are designed to separate organic molecules of similar size but…
A more direct chemical route to ketones
Using a simple, ligand-free palladium catalyst system, researchers at McGill University (Montreal, Que., Canada; www.mcgill.ca) have demonstrated that metal carbonylation — a core chemical reaction for many industrial products — can be used to synthesize ketones directly from hydrocarbons. The…