Latest News
BASF sells Food and Health Performance Ingredients business
BASF SE (Ludwigshafen, Germany) has signed a binding agreement to sell its Food and Health Performance Ingredients business, including the production site in Illertissen, Germany, to Louis Dreyfus Company (LDC), a leading global merchant and processor of agricultural goods including…
Mitsubishi Chemical Group targets EV batteries, semiconductors with pair of expansion projects
The Mitsubishi Chemical Group (MCG; Tokyo) has announced two capacity expansions at its production sites in Japan in response to growing demand for semiconductor materials and lithium-ion batteries. In the first project, MCG will increase its production capacity of a…
AGC and CERT Systems enter research partnership to further CO2-to-ethylene conversion
AGC, Inc. (Tokyo) has agreed to a joint research contract with Canada-based climate tech startup company, CERT Systems Inc. (hereafter CERT) to conduct research on the production of ethylene using CO2 as a raw material through electrolysis technology. In this…
Messer Group starts up “green” CO2 plant
Messer Group GmbH (Bad Soden, Germany) has begun operations at a new plant producing green CO2 at its Vrdy site in the Czech Republic. This enables Messer to increase the supply reliability of its customers, for example in the local…
Desalination advances with new photothermal evaporator
Water scarcity is a growing global concern that is driving increasing efforts to conserve, re-use and treat water. Desalination of seawater is a known technology to combat water shortages, but it is an energy-intensive process. Solar-powered evaporation can be a…
Powerful permanent magnets — without the rare-earth elements
Permanent magnets — materials that create their own persistent magnetic field — are frequently used in most types of electronics, turbines, engines and motors. Currently, nearly all powerful permanent magnets require rare-earth elements (REEs), such as neodymium or samarium. A…
Business News [January 2025]
Plant Watch Chevron upgrades Pasadena refinery to increase capacity and flexibility December 11, 2024 — Chevron Corp. (Houston; www.chevron.com) has completed a retrofit of its petroleum refinery in Pasadena, Texas, which is expected to increase product flexibility and expand the…
CPI Outlook for 2025
The industrial sector consumes more than 80% of basic and specialty chemicals. Worldwide, industrial activity saw a modest recovery in 2024. Global industrial production is expected to have increased by 1.3% by the end of 2024, with predictions of about…
Troubleshooting a Trayed Distillation Column
Presented here is the progress and resolution of a troubleshooting case involving a distillation column with a capacity reduction problem Troubleshooting distillation columns during operation is often the key to stable production at industrial facilities. The collection of troubleshooting references…
Entrainment Flooding and Weeping Velocities
Weeping and flooding phenomena set the vapor velocity in industrial distillation columns. Presented here are procedures for calculating flooding and weeping velocities in a four-pass sieve-tray column In industrial distillation, the term “weeping” is primarily used when the liquid in…