Mitsubishi Heavy Industries has successfully conducted a demonstration of an integrated production process for synthesizing liquid fuels through an integrated process utilizing SOEC Co-Electrolysis and FT Synthesis.

BASF has started up a steam cracker at its Verbund site in China which is claimed to be the first cracker in the world using 100 % renewable energy to drive its main compressors.

Industrial plants are increasingly using smart and advanced technologies such as autonomous drones and autonomous robots to monitor plant operations, carry out internal plant inspections, enable predictive maintenance, track emissions as well as ensure the safety of their plant personnel. Combined, these innovations could revolutionize industrial plant monitoring and safety like never before.

Spray Engineering Devices has awarded a contract to Lanzatech for developing a next generation ethanol facility using sugarcane bagasse. Expected to process up to 300 tons per day of bagasse, the facility will be established in Uttar Pradesh, India, and is a key component of the "SED Smart Village" concept.

L&T Onshore has achieved the Feed-in of the world’s first LC-Max Residue Upgradation Facility at Hindustan Petroleum Corporation’s Visakh Refinery in Andhra Pradesh, India. The unit has a built-in capacity of 3.55 million metric tonnes per annum.

Claimed to be one of the world’s largest industrial heat pumps for CO2-free steam generation, BASF’s industrial heat pump at the Ludwigshafen site in Germany is expected to produce up to 500,000 tons of CO2-free steam per year. With a thermal output of around 50 MWs, the mega heat pump has the potential to reduce CO2 emissions at the site by up to 100,000 tons per year.

With a whooping investment of 4+ billion euros, Project One—Europe’s most sustainable cracker—is the largest investment in the region’s chemical sector in the past 2 decades. The project is expected to produce 1.5 million tonnes of ethylene annually and will have a carbon footprint of less than half of the 10 % best-performing steam crackers in Europe!

A new report titled ‘Bio-based Building Blocks and Polymers – Global Capacities, Production and Trends 2025–2030’ has been compiled by nova-Institute. The report forecasts that the expansion of the global bio-based polymer market will be led by Europe and North America while Asia remains a major growth region.

PROCESS Worldwide brings to you the ‘Top 10 plant engineering projects of January 2026’ from all over the world. Right from BASF starting up its steam cracker at the Verbund site in China to Wood securing a contract for the world's first full-scale iron nitride permanent magnet plant, find out all the projects making headlines here.

Researchers from the Leibniz Institute for Catalysis, Ruhr University Bochum and Evonik Oxeno have developed a novel catalyst system that enables the use of the climate gas carbon dioxide as a raw material for the chemical industry.