With a strong demand for high-tech plastics in China, Lanxess has invested 34 million dollars in China to expand its production in the region. The company aims to develop a second compounding line for its Durethan- and Pocan-branded high-tech engineering plastics at its manufacturing site in Changzhou which is expected to increase the site’s capacity by 30,000 metric tons per year.

Tranter’s NovusBloc welded plate heat exchangers have been selected for the expansion of a North American refinery. The plate heat exchangers are of different sizes and are made of 254SMO and 316L SS materials as well as a single Superchanger gasketed plate heat exchanger. The heat exchangers will be installed at the main production process to reduce CO2 emissions and is capable of handling flammable liquids and/or high temperature fluids.

Electro-Chemical Devices (ECD) has introduced its new self-cleaning oil-in-water sensor – OIW80 which helps municipal water and wastewater facilities as well as industrial plants to quickly and accurately detect oil in water leak incidents. This technology helps one to take quick action in order to prevent contamination of drinking water, fouling of batch processes, damage to plant equipment or contamination of sensitive water ecosystems.

The Schmersal Group has expanded its existing switch series for the heavy industry and it now includes Ex variants that are suitable for use in potentially explosive areas.

Alternative fuels and bio–chemicals specialists Aemetis bring back their newly upgraded 50 million gallon per year capacity biodiesel and refined glycerin production facility in Kakinada, India. The revamped plant now posses the ability to produce high-quality distilled biodiesel, the company states.

Exxon Mobil Chemical Company, a division of Exxon Mobil Corporation, announced that it is expanding the capacity of its global hydrocarbon fluid assets by more than 250,000 tons per year at its world-scale petrochemical sites in Antwerp, Belgium; Baytown, Texas; and Jurong Island, Singapore.

Air Liquide and Oman Oil Refineries and Petroleum Industries Company (Orpic), Oman’s national refining company, recently signed a long term agreement for the supply of nitrogen to the Liwa Plastics Industries Complex.

Asahi Kasei has plans to increase production capacity of Lamous artificial suede at its Nobeoka facility in Japan. With this move, the firm aims to increase its total production capacity to 14 million sq m/year.

SAS, Vattenfall, Shell and LanzaTech have teamed up to explore the production of synthetic sustainable aviation fuel also known as electrofuel on a large scale in Sweden. The synthetic SAF will be produced from fossil free electricity and recovered carbon dioxide by making use of the LanzaJet ‘Alcohol to Jet’ technology.

Tatneft will make use of Versalis’ technologies to develop new rubber plants at its Togliatti industrial site in Russia. On completion, the plants are expected to produce 70 thousand tons of nitrile butadiene rubber and 30 thousand tons of carboxylate styrene butadiene rubber latexes.