China wants to accelerate the concentration of its petrochemical industry into five industrial clusters. The ‘big five’ are listed in the People's Republic's just published new five-year plan. The China Market Insider Report presents them in detail.

The future of process plant communication will be triggered by one key technology: Ethernet-APL. This end-to-end Ethernet solution will enable the free flow of information to and from the field and finally unleash the full potential of the visions behind Industry 4.0.

What does the future handling of field devices look like? Why has digitalization in the process industry not yet progressed as far as users and manufacturers would like? The discussions around device management provide an insight into the challenges. Thanks to Profinet and APL, solutions for this are already starting to emerge.

Shanghai Chemical Industry Park Industrial Gases, a subsidiary of Air Liquide, will invest more than 204 million dollars to build two hydrogen production units and related infrastructure in Shanghai Chemical Industry Park.

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.

China has announced massive investments in one of the country's largest petrochemical industry sites. In Zhanjiang, at the southern tip of the People's Republic in Guangdong Province, another 45.2 billion dollars is being pumped into a Verbund site which will focus on petrochemicals and steel production over the next five years. The German chemical giant BASF is right in the middle of all this.

BASF has plans to construct a commercial-scale battery recycling black mass plant in Schwarzheide, Germany. With a processing capacity of 15,000 tons of EV batteries and production scrap every year, the plant is expected to be built to the highest EHS standards.

Which sectors of the chemical industry in China offer the greatest growth opportunities? Anyone pursuing this question will sooner or later come into contact with an idea that many people in China are downright obsessed with. ‘Overtaking the curve’ is the name of this idea. China Market Insider knows what this means and why China's chemical industry is hoping for the 5G boom.

With an aim to increase production capacity for optical brighteners amidst growing demand across the globe, BASF made the hefty investment at its Monthey site. The significant increase in production capacity at the site has now been achieved.

BASF’s Puristar R0-20 catalyst and Sorbead Adsorption Technology is being assessed by Shell for producing green hydrogen. Both the technologies are now under Shell’s portfolio for potential use across its global green hydrogen projects.