With a new MDI technology, Covestro aims to improve efficiency and environmental protection. Everyone is talking about sustainability — including the chemical industry. With the quartet of regenerative energies, alternative raw materials, recycling solutions and CO2-saving technologies, Covestro wants to become a front runner. A completely new MDI technology should also help.

Power-to-X is on everyone’s lips: as energy storage, alternatives to battery-electric mobility or basic raw materials for industrial processes, the conversion of green electricity into material form is a cornerstone of all defossilization strategies. But how realistic is the vision of fuel from the socket? A test plant in Lower Bavaria, Germany, shows that the necessary technologies have long been in the starting blocks.

BASF’s new acetylene plant can produce 90,000 ton of the versatile chemical annually. A byproduct of the process is what is known as acetylene coke. To prevent the coke from clogging the combustion chamber, it is removed by so-called poking robots, specially developed in-house by BASF.

Hydrogen technology company H2Site has raised 12.5 million euros in a Series A funding round led by Breakthrough Energy Ventures (BEV). The funding is to accelerate the scale up of the company’s integrated membrane reactor and membrane separation technologies.

The global chemical process industries are aware of this trend and some of them are already undertaking mega projects to accelerate their energy transition.

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.

Air Products and Gunvor Petroleum Rotterdam have plans to develop a green hydrogen import terminal in Rotterdam. Green ammonia will be received at the site from Air Products’ green hydrogen production locations.

Vattenfall and Preem are currently exploring the idea to speed up the development of a value chain which connects offshore wind and hydrogen with the refining industry in order to decarbonize its operations.

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.

PROCESS Worldwide brings to you the ‘Top 10 plant engineering projects of June 2022’ from all over the world. Right from Oman developing its first waste-to-hydrogen facility to Europe starting up an e-cracking furnace experimental unit, find out all the projects making headlines here.