Power Drive: Chemical Sector to Benefit from Fragmentation of Energy Supply through 2060
Automotive batteries, biofuels, and solar energy, are three renewable energy segments that can provide significant opportunities for the chemicals sector through 2060, according to a new report by Ingo Schröter, principal for consulting firm A.T. Kearney in Germany. The supply of energy up to 2060...

Study Predicts Widespread Company Failures Will Precede Solar Market Boom
The volume of solar installations will grow at a 23% annual rate from 2010 to 2015, but revenue will grow by just 14%, as prices fall due to remaining overcapacity, says market research firm Lux Research (New York)....

IBM, Stanford Report Organocatalyst Breakthrough
Discovery could have implications in the production of biodegradeable plastics and recycling of common PET, the researchers say....

Researchers Find Greener Way to Process PET Fibers
Researchers at the University of Torino in Italy found that treating polyethylene terephthalate (PET) fibers with a low-temperature, partially ionized gas increased the fibers' affinity for water....

SusChem Builds Relations with Downstream Sectors on Sustainable Production
The European chemical industry is building closer relations with downstream sectors on sustainability issues, says the European Union’s (EU) Technology Platform for Sustainable Chemistry (SusChem), which hosted a meeting on sustainable technologies during the past week in Luxembourg. SusChem, a joint...

Four Injured in Explosion at Cristal Global's U.K. TiO2 Plant
Four people have been injured following an explosion at the Stallingborough, U.K. manufacturing plant of titanium dioxide (TiO2) producer Cristal Global (Cristal; Yanbu, Saudi Arabia). A reactor tank ruptured today at 00:30 local time releasing a cloud of toxic titanium tetrachloride into the local area. The...

Cefic Selects U.S. University to Develop HazChem Tests
The University of North Texas (UNT; DentonTX) has been awarded grants totaling $120,000 to develop toxicology tests relating to the aquatic environment, for Cefic, the European Chemical Industry Council (Brussels) and the International Life Sciences Institute (Washington, DC). Cefic is seeking to build...

DuPont Developing Macroalgae-to-Isobutanol Process
DuPont and Bio Architecture Lab will jointly focus on improving domestic macroalgae aquaculture; converting macroalgae to bio-available sugars; converting those sugars to isobutanol; and economic and environmental optimization of the production process....

Cereplast Starts Up Seymour, IN Site
Production costs will be lower than that at the company's Hawthorne, CA production site, which the company announced in January it would close....

EU ETS Will Not Cause Carbon Leakage, Study Finds
The implementation of the European Union (EU)’s more stringent emissions trading scheme (ETS) in 2013 will have little or no impact on carbon leakage-the effect of driving production to another country, according to a new study by U.K. government-funded body the Carbon Trust. The study is due to be...