A 20 million dollar investment has been announced by Akzo Nobel to increase and improve production at two of its sites in France. Around 30 new jobs will be created.

China's chemical industry has begun to remove one of the major hurdles to commercialising fuel cell. For the first time, a chemical company in China has succeeded in developing its own process for the production of highly pure by-product hydrogen.

Shell Nederland and Shell Overseas Investments, subsidiaries of Shell, have taken the final investment decision to build Holland Hydrogen I, which will be Europe’s largest renewable hydrogen plant once operational in 2025.

Ethylene from ethane, obtained through steam cracking, is the latest boom sector in China's petrochemical industry. Construction of no less than three new large-scale plants was completed just before the start of the New Year, PROCESS (China) reports. While the vast majority of ethylene in China is still produced in petroleum refineries from naphtha, a number of investors are now turning to cheap ethane, mainly from shale gas deposits in the US.

Daring to do something new, but preserve the tried and tested values. That is the motto of Dechema Managing Director Dr Andreas Förster. In recent years, the professional society has become more practical and application-oriented. And there are even more ideas. Förster reveals what these are in the PROCESS interview.

Technip Energies has been awarded a bankable feasibility study contract by Viridian Lithium to develop the first lithium refining and conversion plant in Europe. The France-based plant is expected to produce up to 100,000 tons of battery grade lithium chemicals annually which will establish a secure battery supply chain for the region’s electric vehicle industry.

EU chemicals trade has shrunk this year, as the coronavirus pandemic has spread and lockdowns have restricted industrial activity and consumer goods demand.

BASF intends to increase the capacity of its key specialty amines – polyetheramines and tertiary at its Geismar site in the USA. The capacity expansion is expected to be completed by mid-2023.

Scientists at NTU, Singapore, in collaboration with ETH Zurich, Switzerland (ETHZ), have created a membrane made from a waste by-product of vegetable oil manufacturing, which can filter out heavy metals from contaminated water.

Carbon transformation company Twelve is announcing 130 million dollars in a Series B and additional funding to scale the engineering, manufacturing, and deployment of its industrial-scale carbon transformation technology for the creation of a wide range of products with a lower carbon footprint.