Albemarle has signed two investment agreements with the Yangtze River International Chemical Industrial Park in the Jiangsu province and the Pengshan Economic Development Park in the Sichuan province respectively in China. In the background of these contracts, the company aims to establish a lithium conversion plant at each of these sites which are expected to produce 50,000 metric tons lithium hydroxide per annum initially.

Air Liquide inaugurated in France, in the frame of the "Connect" project, an operation center that is unique in the industrial gas sector

Oil and gas giant Total has selected EDL Anlagenbau to execute a revamp of an FCC gas processing plant, alkylation facility and on–site reactors at Total's site in Leuna, Germany. EDL’s scope for the three projects includes the detail engineering, procurement support, project management and commissioning support (EPC).

When the Arch Western Coal Skyline Mine decided to replace the old belt of its long distance BC-8 pipe conveyor, a new belt had to be designed to be suitable to the existing routing. In addition, a special installation procedure had to be developed to minimise downtime during the belt installation and commissioning.

The scale of US shale gas reserves is conjuring up scenarios that seemed unimaginable just a short time ago. Ammonia plants and crackers are now under construction in a country where the chemical industry appeared to be in terminal decline. Gold fever is currently gripping the plant engineering industry, and everyone wants to be first in line...

Neste and Lyondell Basell jointly announce the first parallel production of bio-based polypropylene and bio-based low-density polyethylene at a commercial scale at the production site in Wesseling, Germany.

Namur’s (The User Association of Automation Technology in Process Industries) recommendation 100 (NE 100) ‘Lists of Properties and their Use in Process Control Engineering Workflows’ which offers optimized business processes for process control technology has now been revised.

Mexico Pacific Ltd (MPL) has plans to use ConocoPhillips’ greenhouse gas emission reduction technologies to reduce emissions at its MPL LNG Project in Mexico. ConocoPhillips will be designing LNG trains for the project based on the OCP Pro technology and will also provide carbon-advantaged gas feedstock to help MPL develop a strategy for supplying carbon neutral LNG in the future.

DSL Japan, a joint venture of Evonik and Shionogi, has plans to expand its specialty silica solutions by 30 % with the help of the new production line at its site in Ako, Japan. With this new unit, the company plans to meet the growing demand from across the world.

Apart from using approved system components, operators have to fulfill a number of obligations to meet the strict requirements of today's explosion protection directives. If this is not sufficient, there is a number of constructive measures available to reach this goal.