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Plant Watch: June 2025 Business News
Plant Watch Cariflex opens $355-million latex plant in Singapore May 15, 2025 — Cariflex Pte. Ltd. (Singapore; www.cariflex.com), a wholly owned subsidiary of DL Chemical Co., Ltd. (DL Chemical), inaugurated its new polyisoprene latex plant at Jurong Island, Singapore. With…
Non-fluorinated coatings reach new heights with first oil- and water-repellent textile product
As industries and consumers have shown an increasing preference for water and oil repellents that do not include any fluorinated materials, significant efforts and years of research and testing have gone into developing non-fluorinated alternatives. AGC Chemicals Americas, Inc. (AGCCA;…
Advanced Mixing Technologies Enhance Process Efficiency
New mixing solutions lead to higher yields, while minimizing energy consumption and material waste Usually engineered for a specific application in the chemical process industries (CPI), mixing solutions have the potential to enhance the efficiency of any process, leading to…
This single-pot reaction scheme could open the path to recycling used tires
Recycling vehicle tires is complicated because the rubbers used (including butadiene and polyisoprene) are highly cross-linked, and because pyrolysis-based recycling of the rubbers generates environmentally hazardous compounds like benzene and dioxins. Now, researchers at the University of North Carolina at…
Generative and Agentic AI: Intelligent Manufacturing Evolves
As many chemical producers are developing and implementing comprehensive AI strategies, newer AI paradigms, such as generative and agentic platforms are set to transform the benefits AI can provide Due to the continuous generation of data and the complexity and…
Direct synthesis of C2 hydrocarbons using photoelectrochemistry
Researchers from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley, Calif. www.lbl.gov), along with a host of collaborators, have made progress on an artificial photosynthesis system that converts CO2 into ethane and ethylene using nanostructured copper and perovskite. In a recent publication…
Product Focus: Seals and gaskets
This pump packing has a modular design The AMPS (Advanced Modular Packing System; photo) is a pump packing system designed to offer superior sealing efficiency and significantly reduce leakage and downtime while extending equipment life. It has a focus on…
Molten-salt electrolysis process quickly scales up U.S. cobalt-refining capacity
A proprietary molten-salt electrolysis (MSE) process originally designed for battery manufacturing has now been re-optimized for North America’s first operational cobalt-refining plant. The DirectPlateTM MSE technology developed by Xerion Advanced Battery Corp. (Kettering, Ohio; www.xerionbattery.com; see Direct molten-salt electroplating cuts…
Use of AI in Chemical Manufacturing
Artificial intelligence (AI) seems to be everywhere in industry, but the nuances of its application are not generally understood completely. Presented here are descriptions of the different subtypes of AI and their main applications currently in chemical processing The term…
Direct cryo-compression of gaseous hydrogen: the “best of both worlds” between liquefaction and compression
Safe and cost-effective storage represents one of the major hurdles in the widespread adoption of “clean” hydrogen in energy applications. A hydrogen-storage approach called cryo-compression is being poised as a bridge between high-density (but expensive) hydrogen liquefaction and cheaper (but…