A union of giants: Chemical heavyweight BASF and Chinese petrochemical giant Sinopec plan a further cooperation for a new world-scale isononanol (INA) plant in Maoming, China. With this investment in plasticizers, the two partners could significantly increase their footprint in China's rubber and polymers business, industry experts believe.

From landfills to the Pacific Garbage Patch: Plastic waste is a major environmental and public health problem. India alone consumes 11 million tonnes of plastic per year out of which 5.6 million tonnes turns into waste. Now, a new technology from India could help to convert these waste amounts of waste into valueable high-indemand fuels virtually without causing any secondary pollution in the process...

The MMA two project comprises 13 partners from six different countries representing all stages of the PMMA value chain, aims to develop a new and innovative process to recycle post-industrial and end-of-life PMMA waste into second generation MMA (methyl methacrylate) monomer. As a partner in this European project, Arkema's Scientific Director Jean-Luc Dubois chairs the project's Advisory Committee.

Chemicals company Kemira and process technology, automation and services company Valmet, have signed a partnership agreement in Europe for collaboration in the water and sludge treatment customer applications. The agreement aims at combining chemistry and smart process optimization expertise in the municipal and industrial water treatment space with analyzer and measurement technology know-how as well as on-site service network.

Gea supplied their Norwegian customer Borregaard with the supply of a turnkey plant for the spray drying of lignosulfonate in the double-digit million range. The solution also includes a new silo for feeding stored powder materials into the plant's packaging system and a large wet scrubber for dedusting. The entire process solution will be installed at the Norwegian site in Sarpsborg and commissioning is scheduled for the middle of 2019.

The specialised technology will be used for Hanwha Total Petrochemical’s new PP production facility in Daesan, South Korea. The facility is expected to commence operations in 2021.

Toyo India has been awarded an Engineering, Procurement and Construction Contract (EPC) to build a new multi-business chemical production site for BASF India at the Dahej Petroleum, Chemicals and Petrochemicals Investment Region (PCPIR), located in Dahej.

Is the time of optimism over? The chemical industry of crisis struck Europe announces a slight but significant output drop of 2.1 percent through first five months of 2012. The figures for May 2012 indicate that production levels are 0.7 percent below May 2011 level, industry association Cefic says.

Global Bioenergies started the initial processing of wheat straw hydrolysate provided by its partner Clariant at its Leuna demo plant, to produce cellulosic isobutene for the first time at this scale. These first runs were part of Optisochem, a project which started in June 2017 and was granted approx. $ 11 million by the Bio Based Industry Joint Undertaking (BBI-JU) as part of the H2020 program.

The new stringent quality standard ISO 13485-2016 is expected to become mandatory for device manufacturers. The firm has adopted this strategy across three of its sites in USA, Europe and Asia.