Welcome to AchemAsia Process Worldwide-ACHEMA worldwide News 01-2007 - AchemAsia is by far the most comprehensive and international exhibition-congress for the process industry in China and Asia. This three-yearly event will take place in Beijing, China for the 7th time in May 2007.
20 years ago I met the former president of DECHEMA, Prof Behrens, in Tokyo at the Third World Congress on Chemical Engineering where he put forward the concept of AchemAsia. With the support of the respective leaders in the Ministry of Chemistry, in 1989 AchemAsia was held for the first time in Beijing. In the meantime this event has already been held six times with continuous success.
more... China’s influence Process Worldwide-04-2006 - The battle for resources is now in full swing. As violent as that metaphor may sound, there is no denying that the redistribution of fuel and other raw materials will not only leave its stamp on the lives of coming generations, but will also necessitate some radical changes in both chemical and process engineering.
The availability and prices of fossil fuels have long been critical factors for the chemical industry and for producers of petrochemicals in particular. Although only seven percent of fossil fuels are used as raw materials, compared with the 93 percent that is simply burned up as fuel, alternative sources of raw materials for the chemical industry are attracting more and more attention these days. more... Bio is booming Process Worldwide-03-2006 - Scarcely a week goes by without at least one
world-scale chemical or petrochemical project being approved or starting up in China. That country’s thirst for oil, raw materials and know-how for the manufacture of chemicals and pharmaceuticals seems to be
unquenchable (see pages 12/13 and 36).
Countless suppliers of both the oil and gas and the chemical process industries (CPI) are currently facing the problems that arise from having too much of a good thing, in this case more orders than they can handle. Nor is it just the demand for oil and raw chemicals in China that they have to thank for this; inquiries from India, Russia and Brazil have also risen sharply.
more... Time for a re-think Process Worldwide-02-2006 - While Europe’s major power suppliers are celebrating record profits, more and more companies in the Chemical Process Industry (CPI) are struggling to cope with sky-rocketing electricity and energy prices. That a sustainable supply of competitively priced raw materials and power is crucial to the European Chemical Process Industry’s ability to compete with its rivals on the global market has long been common knowledge. The energy and electricity market has increased in value by some 80 percent since 2003 and according to Cefic (European Chemical Industry Council), the chemical industry accounts for approx. 12 percent of the European Union’s total energy requirements. Electrolysis alone, a process that is central to the production of a number of important chemicals, now accounts for between 30 and 40 percent of the total manufacturing costs.
more... Automation is the name of the game Process Worldwide-01-2006 - How successful the process industry is depends largely on how fast it can spot and respond to the latest market requirements. These days, new plants have to be built both swiftly and within budget, while relentless pressure on prices translates into ongoing efforts to step up productivity. Scarcely any other field has risen to such prominence during the past few years as automation. The innovative measurement and control technology that now controls complex processes not only makes for greater safety, but serves as a basis for plant maintenance strategies as well.
more... The Challenges Remain Process Worldwide-04-2005 - The global chemical industry is fast approaching a turning point. After years of pared down profit margins and constant pressure to restructure and increase profitability, the industry is slowly but surely entering a period of renewed growth. Traditionally strong on exports, Europe's chemical industry is now having to contend with ever more powerful Asian competitors whose enormous production capacity is once again putting the squeeze on margins. Yet it is important not to overreact to this development; after all, the chemical industry has not been earning its capital costs these past ten years and as a capital-intensive industry is in any case subject to a hog cycle. Despite the massive expansion of the nineties, for example, it consistently fell short of expectations and according to some analysts paid too dearly for its acquisitions. Its focus since then has naturally been on cash and costs.
more... Between change and reality Process Worldwide-PharmaTec_4/5-2005 - How much more regulation can the pharmaceutical industry bear? That was one of the questions addressed at the recent Chemgineering pharmaceutical symposium. To keep the answer short and simple: Not much more. Even worse, regulations, lagging far behind technical developments, are in urgent need of adaptation to current circumstances. The head of Chemgineering Dr. Herbert Matthys hit the nail on the
head stating that almost nothing had changed in process engineering for 150 years. Even now, he said, discontinuous systems are being used although continuous processes—and hence microreactors—could bring enormous progress in terms of process and cost optimization. It was not the technical possibilities that were the limiting factor, he maintained, but rather the traceability demanded by the authorities, traceability that could not be guaranteed as a matter of course in continuous processes. The situation with biopharmaceuticals was even more precarious, said Dr. Friedrich Nachtmann of Sandoz. Processes had to be finalized
as early as for products going into the clinical phase III
—it was not possible to change the processes and procedures afterwards. The result? Companies have to carry an almost unconscionably high risk. more... Investment boom in the Gulf Process Worldwide-03-2005 - Is globalization a blessing or a curse? Opinions are divided. What is not in dispute, however, is that anyone wanting to slow down or even stop the globalization process is doomed to failure. Yet it is still interesting to watch how the various developments are affecting various parts of the world and how they are responding to them.
more... Going China Process Worldwide-pharma03-2005 - As both sales market and production location, China
is currently a controversial topic of debate. With GDP growing steadily at between eight and nine percent a year, China promises plenty of opportunities for Western companies. What it also promises, however, is more and more (lower-priced) competition from the Chinese themselves. Despite starting almost from scratch,
the Chinese have already outstripped their Western competitors to become the world’s leading suppliers for some products. Even chemicals made in China are increasingly capturing the market. But what about pharmaceuticals? Given that not even pharmaceutical companies will be able to resist China’s pull indefinitely, the
real question to be answered in the long run is
this: Does the opening up of China constitute a threat or
an opportunity?
more... Who decides when to service? Process Worldwide-02-2005 - There are lots of maxims that most people
would subscribe to in theory, but are unable to live up to in practice. Most service technicians working in the processing industries, for example, would agree that “preventive servicing makes sense,” even though this can scarcely be described as standard practice. In most cases, plants are serviced only when absolutely necessary. In other words, it is the malfunctioning plant and not the operator that decides when to service.
more... More than just a peccadillo Process Worldwide-pharma02-2005 - An unwanted pregnancy in Brazil “thanks” to a counterfeit contraceptive pill, drinking water in Nigeria contaminated with meningococcal vaccine and 59 children dead in Haiti after being treated with counterfeit cough medicine: These are just three examples of the dire consequences that drug piracy can have. And the list goes on and on. Yet the case of the cough medicine alone would be enough to show that what we are talking about here is certainly no peccadillo. What is at issue has long been far more than how best to avert the financial losses such piracy causes. According to some estimates, counterfeit medication results in some 100,000 deaths a year in China alone!
more... Challenges in China Process Worldwide-ACHEMA worldwide News-2006 - BASF is the world’s leading chemical company with a portfolio starting from crude oil and natural gas reaching to chemicals, plastics, performance products, agricultural products and fine chemicals. The Corporate Engineering unit GI is responsible for the execution of large capital projects within BASF.
With its approximately 600 employees GI executes projects worldwide in the e2 million to e1 billion range. Corporate Engineering’s specialty is its function as owner’s engineer, which means that GI ensures flexible project implementation and the optimization of operating and investment costs.
more... Benefiting from process automation Process Worldwide-ACHEMA worldwide News 1-2005 - Automation technology is an important partner for chemical engineering, environmental protection and biotechnology.
Nowadays a holistic view of chemical plants entails not only dealing with equipment, piping systems and processes, but goes beyond classical measurement and control techniques to encompass a fully integrated approach to systems management. The pressure caused by increasing competition, environmental restraints and energy and raw materials costs has generated tremendous efforts in the chemical industry to operate production plants ever more efficiently. Besides eliminating bottlenecks in equipment and processes, this particularly involves using intelligent automation for plant optimization. For this reason it is only logical for automation technology to be given pride of place at Achema. To this end Namur, User Association of Process Control Technology in Chemical and Pharmaceutical Industries, has undertaken to support Achema. A cooperation contract between Dechema and Namur is a concrete token of this commitment. In future Namur will boost the automation side of Achema.
more... Waiting in the wings Process Worldwide-01-2005 - Everyone in plant construction seems to be doing well these days. Whether it is AkerKvaerner or Foster Wheeler landing huge orders from Saudi Arabia, or BASF commissioning its first plant in Nanjing, there has been no let-up in the steady stream of orders for new production facilities coming from both Asia and numerous oil producing countries more... Dipping into nature’s own toolbox Process Worldwide-pharma01-2005 - Modern biotechnological production methods are steadily gaining ground. “White biotechnology”, meaning the industrial use of biotechnological methods, is doing especially well, with experts at McKinsey estimating that by 2010, biotech processes and products will account for up to 20 percent of the chemical and pharmaceutical industries’ total sales. That two of the four Innovation Awards presented for the first time at last December’s CPhI — Chemicals, Pharmaceuticals, Ingredients — in Brussels were in recognition of work in this field therefore comes as no surprise. more... Erfolgreich durch den Datendschungel Process Worldwide-PharmaTEC 06-2004 - ren hochautomatisierte Techniken heutzutage immense Datenmengen. Allein in der Chemical Abstracts Datenbank sind 23 Millionen Substanzen gespeichert. Um diese Myriade zu katalogisieren und indizieren sowie Strukturen- und Substrukturen darin zu suchen, ist heute die so genannte Cheminformatik nicht mehr wegzudenken. Dahinter verbirgt sich die Anwendung von Methoden der Informatik, um chemische Probleme zu lösen. Eine besondere Bedeutung haben computergestützte Methoden im Bereich der Wirkstoffentwicklung erfahren. Mithilfe geeigneter Algorithmen wird versucht, Vorhersagen über Eigenschaften von Molekülen zu machen, z.B. orale Verfügbarkeit oder die Fähigkeit einer Substanz, die Funktion eines bestimmten Proteins im Organismus zu hemmen oder zu verstärken. Interessant sind solche Verfahren, weil man sie auch auf virtuelle Moleküle in silico anwenden kann, also ohne die Substanzen tatsächlich synthetisiert zu haben und in Händen zu halten. So lassen sich unter Umständen Millionen von Molekülen via Computer-Methoden in silico testen und auf wenige Kandidaten mit gewünschten Eigenschaften reduzieren, die dann im Labor synthetisiert und klinisch getestet werden.
more... The new time factor Process Worldwide-04-2004 - The industrialized nations live from their innovations. The growing markets of the Far East and Southeast Asia are now making more demands of our creativity and innovative potential than ever before. In China and other emerging regions of this world, companies that
until just recently had been no-names are ra-
pidly turning into global players with tremendous competitive potential. The Earth, or so it seems, is turning faster than it did a
few years ago. The main driving force behind this development is the communications revolution. We are now communicating and exchanging information faster than at any time in the past and this in turn is adding to the pressure. We send e-mails all over the globe and seek the information we need in our seemingly endless digital library of human knowledge otherwise known as the Internet. Companies that take a professional attitude to their customers’ needs have long
since placed all the relevant information on the Internet. While those still dwelling in the past may regret this, no one can now change or put a stop to the development. more... No experiments Process Worldwide-ACHEMA worldwide News_2-2004 - “No experiments” was the slogan behind one German politician’s successful election campaign some decades ago. Today it still sounds a reasonable way to avoid unnecessary risks – at first glance. But can we afford to maintain this attitude when manoeuvring a company through the turbulence of our globalized economy? In other words, can we afford to stick to our home territory, even if that includes the rest of the European Union outside our own national borders?
It has always been DECHEMA’s mission to offer our exhibitors the most effective opportunities to present themselves to an international audience. In this context the leading event by far is still, of course, ACHEMA in Frankfurt. Yet with China as the main destination for international investment today, suppliers to the process industries now
benefit hugely from DECHEMA’s bold decision, back in the late 1980s, to establish AchemAsia in Beijing. Though AchemAsia began as an experiment, it has grown into a success.
more... Wanted – active substances! Process Worldwide-PharmaTec 05-2004 - The pharmaceutical industry is currently facing an acute shortage of active
substances. This, at least, is the view espoused by Dr. Andreas Wolter, Technical Director of the Hamburg-based Proligo Biochemie GmbH, in a statement on the drugs of the future. The message coming from most pharmaceutical boardrooms is very different, however. After all, to question the fruits of R&D would also mean questioning the way in which R&D budgets have shot up from approximately two billion dollars in 1980 to over 40 billion dollars in 2003. Does this spell failure for the highly industrialized model of pharmaceutical research that evolved out of the search for new drugs in the last century? Have the heady
ex-pectations placed by researchers and investors in such high-profile projects as high-throughput screening, the Human Genome Project and combinatorial chemistry — to name but a few — been disappointed? The fact is that after a period in which the USA was approving between 50 and 60 new substances a year, the 1990s saw the number of new approvals going into decline,
reaching a new low of just 18 new substances in 2002.
more... Gambling with Thor, the god of thunder Process Worldwide-03-2004 - Have you been pelted with hailstones for half the summer as well? Admittedly, there weren’t any whirlwinds in July, but plenty of storms with hailstones and floods descended on Western Europe, along with a fair portion of thunder and lightning. One local thunderstorm showed itself to be particularly conscientious and produced lightning flashes by the second. True, the damage was not excessive, but it was distressing for all that — even if was just an old TV set on its last legs. more... Significant progress Process Worldwide-PharmaTec 04-2004 - Paradigm shifts in pharmaceutical research and production have a tendency to be abrupt. What just a few years ago seemed inconceivable is now no longer just a pipe dream in many areas. Among the prime movers behind this development are huge advances in computer simulation, nano technology research and biocatalysis – to name but a few examples.
One topical example worth mentioning is a project at Bayer Technology Services, where engineers took a computer simulation program intended originally for the simulation of chemical processes, upgraded it and adapted it to the requirements of pharmaceutical research. Thanks to this, researchers in pharmacokinetics at Bayer HealthCare are now able to follow the complicated path each drug takes through the human organism and so can establish how fast each substance is absorbed and then broken down again. Whereas information of this nature used to require highly sophisticated experiments, this new program, called PK-Sim, can produce the same results with the aid of a computer. Although no detailed experience is available as yet, Bayer’s Research Director Oels could imagine savings in drug development in the order of hundreds of millions. If the model is successful and can be made available to external customers as well, this will indeed represent a paradigm shift and with it immense savings in drug development costs.
more... Enzymes are gaining ground Process Worldwide-PharmaTec 03-2004 - Even though “white biotechnology” is no longer new, the use of biotechnology techniques such as biocatalysis in industrial processes has not really come to the forefront until recently. What began a hundred years ago when amylases, proteases and lipases where used in bakeries, tanneries and breweries is now seen as the new driving force in the life science industry. The discovery of increasing numbers of enzymes and the growing sophistication of recombinant technologies have substantially broadened the commercial and technical
scope. The level of acceptance for this technology is increasing in step with the impressive progress which we are witnessing.
more... Expansion is imperative Process Worldwide-PharmaTEC 02-2004 - Biopharmaceuticals have long since become firmly established on markets worldwide and in 2002 generated sales of over $ 41 billion, according to a recent survey by Frost & Sullivan. Furthermore, the list of biopharmaceuticals currently in clinical trials is getting longer all the time. Before long, one in five active substances could well be a product of genetic engineering. Market researchers believe that current trials of pioneering new drugs for cancer, AIDS,diabetes and cardiovascular disease will help stimulate the demand still further, especially in view of the ageing of the population and ever greater incidence of these diseases.
more... No backtracking on safety, please! Process Worldwide-02-2004 - In theory it seems clear enough. Safety technology needs to be harmonized across European production plants for the benefit of workers and the general public, and to guarantee free movement of goods within the European Union. EU directive 94/9/EG, also known as Atex 100a, aimed to do exactly that when it came into force on July 1st, 2003. The directive extends the requirement for type approval to cover equipment that is not primarily electrical, such as mixers, and it defines for the first time the responsibility of equipment users as well as manufacturers. more... Thirst for knowledge Process Worldwide-01-2004 - Wavering between hope and fear is perhaps the best way to describe the relationship between the West and the People’s Republic of China. For most insiders, the prospect of doing a large volume of business is accompanied by a growing unease about the future. The Asians are clearly in a dominant position if you look at present circumstances and expected growth rates.
more... InfoClick: The Information-Turbo Process Worldwide-PharmaTEC 01-2004 - Without doubt we are entering a new era: The age of information and communication. And just as communication technology has developed by leaps and bounds these past few years – from the advent of the Internet to the ubiquitous
mobile phone – so, too, our communicative behavior has changed radically. These days, most people want to be contactable and to have to access information anywhere and anytime (best of all, right now). All those buzzwords the globalized economy has spawned, from “time is money” and “time to market” to “just in time”, have left their mark.
more... InfoClick: The Information-Turbo Process Worldwide-04-2003 - Without doubt we are entering a new era: The age of information and communication. And just as communication technology has developed by leaps and bounds these past few years – from the advent of the Internet to the ubiquitous
mobile phone – so, too, our communicative behavior has changed radically. These days, most people want to be contactable and to have to access information anywhere and anytime (best of all, right now). All those buzzwords the globalized economy has spawned, from “time is money” and “time to market” to “just in time”, have left their mark. more... Paradigm change in solids production Process Worldwide-PharmaTEC 01-2003 - Necessity is known to be the mother of invention. While, according to a McKinsey Management Consultants study, the R&D sector of the pharmaceutical industry has suffered a drop of 25% in productivity since the beginning of the nineties, despite the use of the most modern techniques, and is still struggling with it, the industry is now increasingly trying to combat the enormous cost pressure by increasing efficiency in production. more... Top performers Process Worldwide-03-2003 - “There are a lot of engineering companies around the world, but very few can access the wealth of experience and cross-functional know-how that we have.” With this conviction in mind, a new team is joining the fray in the major league of global engineering companies.
more... Love and hate Process Worldwide-02-2003 - Do you hate the word “innovations” as much as I do? OK, I’ll admit that I, too, was once in love with the expression. In fact, every time it popped up in an article I was reading, I got an adrenalin rush and feverishly read
on...only to be frequently disappointed. Meanwhile, I continue to get excited
whenever I come across this promising little word, however I also know what to
expect: Wonderfully concealed content that isn’t worthy of the wrapping it came
in. more... We`re all in the same boat Process Worldwide-01-2003 - If I were to ask you to name a corporation that is 100 percent American – meaning a company that produces in the USA, whose suppliers and customers come from the USA and that does not have a single development manager or major shareholder from anywhere other than the USA, then your reply would probably be a long time coming.
more... The allure of black gold Process Worldwide-04-2002 - “Toward black gold throng all. To black gold cling all.” May good old Goethe forgive me for daring to add the epithet “black” to Gretchen’s famous words from the evening scene in Part I of Faust. He certainly could not accuse me of having distorted the meaning. For what was true of gold in the age of alchemy is no less true of oil in the age of industry. more... Successful narrow-mindedness Process Worldwide-03-2002 - Sometimes it pays to be narrow-minded! Just as it did at BP Chemical in Great Britain. There, senior management insisted that no outdated processes were to be used in the planned new plants for the production of vinyl acetate monomer (VAM) and ethyl acetate (ETAC). The demand was brief and to the point: "No repeats in technology". This caused a problem for the process technology manager, together with much more work - but it also brought the chance of creating something big. more... Top of the class Process Worldwide-02-2002 - Be honest, dear reader: When you hear the word “Switzerland”, what springs to mind first are mountains, holidays, upland pastures, alpine horns, happy cows, tasty cheese and – unless you happen to be less interested in sports – the name Simon Ammann. For those who don’t know: Simon Ammann won two gold medal for ski jumping at this year’s Olympic Winter Games. more...
