INEOS to Acquire Eastman Texas Site for $500 million Including Acetic Acid Plant

INEOS announces it has reached an agreement with #EastmanChemical Company to purchase the Eastman Texas City site, including the 600kt #AceticAcid plant and all associated third-party activities on the site, for circa $500 million.

Eastman and INEOS have also entered into a Memorandum of Understanding to explore options for a long-term supply agreement for vinyl acetate monomers(VAM).

Supporting Sustainable Future of the Site:

David Brooks, CEO INEOS Acetyls, comments, “We are delighted to announce this strategic #acquisition which will help drive our global ambition for our #Acetyls business. The site is ideally placed to take advantage of competitively priced #feedstocks which will help support the growth of our business and #sustainable future of the site.”

Currently #INEOS licenses its leading Cativa® Acetic Acid Technology to Eastman Chemical Texas City for production of Acetic Acid at the site.

“We are happy to have reached this agreement with INEOS. They have been a strong partner with us at the Texas City site and have extensive experience and a complementary position in the acetyls space,” said Erwin Dijkman, division president, Chemical #Intermediates.

Dijkman continued, “Our Texas City Operations is an attractive site with an incredible team of people, and we are pleased that INEOS plans to further invest in and grow the site. We look forward to working closely with INEOS as we prepare for a seamless transition later this year, and longer-term as operators of our plasticizer assets at the site.”

All current employees on the Eastman Texas City site will transfer over to INEOS upon completion of the transaction. The plasticizers unit on the site will continue to be owned by Eastman but will be operated and maintained by INEOS from closing. The deal is targeted to close before the end of 2023, subject to regulatory approvals.

Source: INEOS/specialchem

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Today's KNOWLEDGE Share:Healthy Soil

Today's KNOWLEDGE Share

We all know that a healthy soil is essential for successful and #sustainablefarming. But let's start with the basics!
Do you really know what soil is?

Soil is a living, breathing organism that feeds everything on the planet (except for sea production).

Soil is composed roughly by:
45% of minerals
20 to 30% of air
20 to 30% of water
2 to 10% of organic matter (Including microbes and anything that was or is alive)

This last component, seems to be less relevant, but it is of major importance. Soil microbes are tiny organisms that live in the soil, and they have a crucial job in keeping it healthy.

These tiny organisms, like bacteria, fungi, protozoa, and nematodes, perform various essential functions that support plant growth and overall soil well-being.

For example, soil microbes…
Help to break down organic matter, which provides nutrients to help plants grow.
️ Improve soil structure, making it better at holding water and nutrients.
️ Help to control pests and diseases, keeping crops healthy and productive.

So, when thinking about soil, let’s remember that soil microbes are an essential component of soil health, and understanding their role can help you to ensure that your soil is healthy and productive. After all, taking care of the soil's health is crucial for everyone who depends on the land for food, fuel, and other resources.

Source:Organic consumers association of Australia
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#agriculture #farming #soil #soilmicrobiome #sustainableagriculture #soilhealth
 

What’s Next for 3D Printing?

While 3D printing, or additive manufacturing, is transforming the industrial world, it also has opened up new possibilities in other areas, such as smart materials and bioprinting.

With its seemingly limitless potential, fast-evolving 3D printing/additive manufacturing is changing the way goods and services are designed, manufactured, and consumed. But there are even greater transformations on the horizon. Here are some of the emerging innovations that 3D printing is bringing to different industries and sectors.

Bioprinting

#Bioprinting is the process of using 3D printing to create biological structures, such as tissues, organs, and cells, from #biomaterials, such as cells, proteins, and polymers.Hailed as one of the most exciting trends, bioprinting will become commonplace as the technology matures, carrying with it the power to save lives by offering solutions for organ shortages, disease modeling, drug testing, and tissue engineering, thus revolutionising the fields of #medicine, biotechnology, and #bioengineering. What started as a regenerative medicine tool, 3D bioprinting’s ultimate goal is the production of artificial organs for transplantation.

England’s University of Birmingham is leading development of the technology through the creation of a new 3D bioprinting process that speeds up and simplifies the creation of tissue-compatible artificially engineered organs, making wider adoption more likely. Another medical first involving 3D bioprinting technology is the development of a new method of immunotherapy for treating cancer using natural killer cells (NK cells).

4D printing and smart materials:

#4Dprinting technology uses the 3D printing process to create objects with shape-memory alloys, #hydrogels, or self-healing polymers that can change their shape, properties, or functions over time or in response to external stimuli, such as temperature, light, or moisture. While #3Dprinting creates static structures, 4D printing and smart materials have the potential to create adaptive and responsive products and systems, such as self-assembling structures, wearable devices/soft robotics.

Whilst 3D printing offers an alternative way of producing the same product that might have been created using #CNCmachining or #injectionmolding, 4D printing creates parts that traditional manufacturing methods simply cannot achieve. This is one reason why 4D printing will transform many industries.

Smart medical implants and tissue engineering are two areas being targeted to benefit from the 4D printing approach in medical engineering applications. Software and hardware for a 4D printer with applications in the biomedical industry have also been developed by researchers at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid making it possible to create soft robotics, intelligent sensors, and substrates that send signals to various cellular systems, among other things.

Source:Luke Smoothy/Plasticstoday

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Today's KNOWLEDGE Share #Aluminum

 Today's KNOWLEDGE Share

#Aluminum is one of our most widely-used metals, found in everything from beer cans to airplane parts.However, the lightweight metal doesn’t occur naturally, and producing it is a complex process.Each year, the world produces around 390 million tonnes of bauxite rock, and 85% of it is used to make aluminum.

Bauxites are rocks composed of aluminum oxides along with other minerals and are the world’s primary source of aluminum. After mining, bauxite is refined into alumina, which is then converted into aluminum.

Therefore, aluminum typically goes from ore to metal in three stages.

Stage 1: Mining Bauxite

Bauxite is typically extracted from the ground in open-pit mines, with just three countries—Australia, China, and Guinea—accounting for 72% of global mine production.

Country2021 Mine Production of Bauxite (tonnes) % of Total

Australia  110,000,000 28.2%

China  86,000,000 22.1%

Guinea  85,000,000 21.8%

Brazil  32,000,000 8.2%

India  22,000,000 5.6%

Indonesia  18,000,000 4.6%

Russia  6,200,000 1.6%

Jamaica  5,800,000 1.5%

Kazakhstan  5,200,000 1.3%

Saudi Arabia  4,300,000 1.1%

Rest of the World  15,500,000 4.0%

Total 390,000,000 100.0%

Australia is by far the largest bauxite producer, and it’s also home to the Weipa Mine, the biggest bauxite mining operation globally.

Stage 2: Alumina Production

In the 1890s, Austrian chemist Carl Josef Bayer invented a revolutionary process for extracting alumina from bauxite.

Here are the four key steps in the Bayer process:

Digestion:

Bauxite is mixed with sodium hydroxide and heated under pressure. At this stage, the sodium hydroxide selectively dissolves aluminum oxide from the bauxite, leaving behind other minerals as impurities.

Filtration:

Impurities are separated and filtered from the solution, forming a residue known as red mud. After discarding the mud, aluminum oxide is converted into sodium aluminate.

Precipitation:

The sodium aluminate solution is cooled and precipitated into a solid, crystallized form of aluminum hydroxide.

Calcination:

The aluminum hydroxide crystals are washed and heated in calciners to form pure aluminum oxide a sandy white material known as alumina.

The impurities or red mud left behind in the alumina production process is a major environmental concern.

Source:.visualcapitalist

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Today's KNOWLEDGE Share : Reversible Fluid Mixing

Today's KNOWLEDGE Share

Reversible Fluid Mixing

What it shows:

Ink is squirted into a fluid and mixed in until it disappears. By precisely undoing the motions in the reverse direction, the ink becomes unmixed! The demonstration seems to defy #thermodynamics in that it appears that entropy decreases, but in actuality the reversible mixing is made possible by ensuring that the mixing/unmixing is done without turbulence.

The space between two transparent and concentric cylinders is filled with a viscous fluid (glycerine or Karo™ syrup). One or more lines of colored fluid are also injected into this fluid reservoir, parallel to the axis of the cylinder(s). When the inside cylinder is slowly rotated (by means of a crank) with respect to the outside cylinder, the lines of colored fluid become mixed with the rest of the fluid. Several revolutions renders the mixture completely clear and "mixed". If one now reverses the direction of #rotation, the colored fluid lines reappear by "#unmixing" after the same number of rotations in the opposite sense.

The design and operation of the apparatus ensures laminar flow. Diffusion processes are, of course, much much slower than the time scale of the demonstration. As one cylinder is rotated w.r.t. the other, one can simply think of layers of fluid being displaced without involving #turbulence, the boundary layer next to the inner rotating cylinder being displaced the most and the layer adjacent to the outside cylinder the least. #Counterrotation slips these layers back into place.

Setting it up:

The fluid should be of high viscosity. We have used glycerine or corn syrup. The apparatus capacity is 2.2 to 2.3 liters; thus about 5 bottles of Light Corn Syrup should suffice. It will be necessary to add some kind of preservative 1 to the corn syrup if you plan to leave it in the apparatus for extended periods. Mold does not grow in the glycerine, but glycerine costs about $50/gallon.

The #ink should have similar #viscosity to the fluid you use. A few drops of food coloring mixed into about 10 ml of fluid works well. A #verticalline" of colored fluid is squirted into the apparatus by means of a hypodermic syringe fitted with a large needle and long stainless-steel extension tube. Alternatively, a 5 ml volumetric pipette fitted with a pipette rubber squeeze-bulb also works well. After the demonstration, the dye can be thoroughly mixed (by a few dozen turns) so that the syrup (or glycerine) can be used again. This will give you many uses before you have to discard it.

References:

J.P. Heller, Am J Phys 28, 348-353 (1960). "An Unmixing Demonstration"

This reference provides the mathematical description (Navier-Stokes equations) of the mixing transformation in the geometry of the Couette viscometer, which is a similar geometry to our apparatus.

R. Brewer and E. Hahn, Scientific American, Dec 1984

Source:https://sciencedemonstrations.fas.harvard.edu

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#reversiblefuildmixing

FORVIA starts deliveries of hydrogen tanks from first mass production plant in France

Recently, type IV Hydrogen tanks* have started rolling out from FORVIA’s groundbreaking mass production plant in Allenjoie, France. This first-of-its-kind facility in Europe and North America aims to produce 100,000 tanks annually.

With hydrogen as a driving force behind the decarbonization of mobility and industry, FORVIA is committed to delivering safe and affordable #hydrogenstorage technology. By streamlining processes and excelling in industrialization, we will slash production costs by 5 between 2023 and 2025.

This plant will serve the automotive and hydrogen #distribution & #storage industries for the European market. Leading European customers such as #Stellantis, #Hyvia and #MAN have already placed their trust in us to deliver solutions for on-board mobility applications. The plant will also produce the Type IV tanks that make up the Large-Scale Hydrogen Storage Solution which will be delivered to AirFlow for distribution & storage application.

“FORVIA has reached a major milestone in its hydrogen history! With deliveries already underway and a robust order book, our Allenjoie plant sets a new benchmark. From tank manufacturing to complete storage systems, our mid-term capacity of 100,000 tanks per year demonstrates our commitment to mass production and operational excellence. We’re driving the safe, affordable hydrogen technology our society needs, meeting customer expectations and decarbonizing our future.” said Patrick Koller, CEO of FORVIA.

First plant in France to achieve “BREEAM Excellent” certification

The plant in Allenjoie symbolizes #FORVIA’s unwavering commitment to sustainability. Engineered with sustainability at its core, the plant consumes less energy and has received the prestigious #“BREEAM Excellent” certification in 2022. As the first plant in France and only the second in Europe to achieve this high-level sustainability certification, it serves as a blueprint for the deployment of the FORVIA’s global #productionstandards. Expansion plans in China, North America, and Korea are already in motion, solidifying our commitment to a decarbonized industry.

A major hydrogen player

Since 2018, FORVIA has invested over €380M in #hydrogentechnology development. We remain steadfast in our commitment to this promising market, which is expected to grow to €20bn in 2030. FORVIA and Symbio** have registered a cumulated order intake of 1.2bn€ aligned with the long-term ambition of FORVIA as a leader in hydrogen with revenues of €3.5bn in 2030.

Source:www.faurecia.com/jeccomposites

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#composites #carbonfiber #thermoplastic #thermoset #h2tanks #autoindustry