Because of low crude oil prices, times are hard for bio-based chemicals as they can rarely compete with their fossil counterparts pricewise and cannot even play a trump card in the matter of climate change. Nevertheless, industry and academia are developing bio-based processes fervently and with the prerequisite that the products must not be more expensive than conventional ones.

Praxair announced that it has renewed and expanded a long-term contract to supply hydrogen to Marathon Petroleum Corporation’s Galveston Bay Refinery in Texas City, Texas.

The 167,000 people who came through the doors at this year’s ACHEMA in Frankfurt between the 18th and 22nd of June 2012 may not have set any visitor attendance records, but the event organizers have every reason to be more than satisfied with the proportion of international exhibitors and trade visitors.

Synbra Technology in the Netherlands had put a PLA (polylactic acid) plant into service. The plant can produce up to 5000 tons PLA per year and Synbra plans to further expand the capacity. Furthermore Sulzer decided to built its own 1000 tons a year PLA production plant to support customers in the development of new applications.

Technology company The Linde Group has been awarded a major contract by Reliance Industries (RIL) to build several plants to generate and purify gases in Jamnagar, India. Part of the Reliance Group, India’s largest private enterprise, RIL specialises in the energy and petrochemicals industries.