BASF and Adani Group have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), to evaluate a major joint investment in the acrylics value chain. This would be the German group’s largest investment in India to date.

Emirates National Oil Company (ENOC) has ambitious plans for its Jebel Ali refinery: The Oil company plans to double the facilities output with the help of a megasized three stages expansion program.

The refining industry in India can be divided into two: the private and public sector. Here’s an overview of the comparison between the sectors in terms of product-mix, refining margin, capacity, pricing and market, and what this entails for the industry as a whole.

Hydrocarbons are likely to remain the most important source of energy for decades to come in India, despite other forms of energy such as coal, renewable energy, etc. India is currently the fourth largest consumer of petroleum products in the world in spite of a very low per capita consumption, said Additional Secretary, Ministry of Petroluem & Natural Gas, Ajay Sawhney (IAS) while inaugurating the 20th Refinery Technology Meet at Gandhinagar, Gujarat.

Merck and Roche have agreed to renew their current distribution agreement for the Biochemical Reagents and Kapa Biosystems product portfolios, as well as select real-time quantitative PCR & Nucleic Acid Purification products.

According to the contract, KBR is expected to provide basic engineering and design services for its K-SAAT technology. The firm will also have the opportunity to use the technology to revamp the existing hydrofluoric acid alkylation unit at the Wynnewood refinery.

Plant operator Odfjell has announced a shutdown of one of Europe's largest independent storage terminals for petrochemicals and hazardous goods in Rotterdam port for safety reasons. The terminal will only cater process industries with risk of plant shutdowns during this period, Odfjell speakers stated.

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.

Although PLC and DCS are both used in the automation systems, there were completely different purposes behind their creation, and up to a certain time their functionalities were quite different. Today, advanced automation solutions can even over-perform both of them. Recently, in an exclusive discussion with PROCESS India team, A. Bhaduri, General Manager-Process Solutions, Rockwell Automation (India), explained the origin, evolution, convergence and next level of these two technologies. An excerpt...

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.