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DATE : 2013-09-27
Unigel has shut down its 60,000 tonnes/year Acrylonitrile (ACN) plant in the Morelos petrochemical complex in Veracruz, Mexico, sources said.
The plant, a joint venture between Unigel and Pemex Petroquimica, is experiencing a propylene supply issue, sources said.
The plant, which began operations in 2009, shut down in August for planned maintenance.
INEOS, which also shut down its 545,000 tonnes/year ACN plant in Green Lake, Texas, in late August for planned maintenance, is continuing to ramp up production, sources said.
SOURCE Icis News
Unigel has shut down its 60,000 tonnes/year Acrylonitrile (ACN) plant in the Morelos petrochemical complex in Veracruz, Mexico, sources said.
The plant, a joint venture between Unigel and Pemex Petroquimica, is experiencing a propylene supply issue, sources said.
The plant, which began operations in 2009, shut down in August for planned maintenance.
INEOS, which also shut down its 545,000 tonnes/year ACN plant in Green Lake, Texas, in late August for planned maintenance, is continuing to ramp up production, sources said.
SOURCE Icis News
DATE : 2013-09-27
Japan-based Mitsubishi Gas Chemical (MGC) plans to shut its 40,000 tonne/year methyl methacrylate (MMA) plant in Niigata in early October for a turnaround, company sources said on Friday.
The plant is expected to be off line for 45 days, they added.
SOURCE Icis News
Japan-based Mitsubishi Gas Chemical (MGC) plans to shut its 40,000 tonne/year methyl methacrylate (MMA) plant in Niigata in early October for a turnaround, company sources said on Friday.
The plant is expected to be off line for 45 days, they added.
SOURCE Icis News
DATE : 2013-09-27
Lotte Chemical is in plans to restart its Styrene monomer (SM) plant following maintenance turnaround.A Polymerupdate source in South Korea informed that the plant will be restarted in H2 October, 2013. It was shut on September 23, 2013 for maintenance turnaround.Located in Daesan, South Korea, the plant has a production capacity of 560,000 mt/year.
SOURCE PolymerUpdate
Lotte Chemical is in plans to restart its Styrene monomer (SM) plant following maintenance turnaround.A Polymerupdate source in South Korea informed that the plant will be restarted in H2 October, 2013. It was shut on September 23, 2013 for maintenance turnaround.Located in Daesan, South Korea, the plant has a production capacity of 560,000 mt/year.
SOURCE PolymerUpdate
DATE : 2013-09-28
"This could be the beginning of a breakthrough battery technology for electric vehicles."
I see such breathless news releases often enough that I've learned to file them under "How Nice," and move on.
Since I like electric vehicles, I'd be happy if any breakthrough amounts to anything. And I expect it will happen. But not for a while.
Here's why:
The battery is the Achilles heel of electric vehicles.
Although EVs score high for comfort and performance, and sales are improving, they'll remain a niche market until batteries provide much longer range and lifespan, plus faster recharging, at a substantially lower cost.
Experts say range must at least triple, and costs fall two-thirds, before battery power can go mainstream. Most predict that's at least 20 years away.
Some insist lithium-ion batteries will never do the job. They await dazzling alternatives, none of which is remotely ready for prime time.
I learned why development is so slow during a visit to one of North America's leading battery-research centres, the Argonne National Lab, in a leafy suburb west of Chicago.
It's among the institutions and corporations sharing a bonanza of government cash - including $2 billion announced four years ago by U.S. President Barack Obama - to help the United States catch up to Japan, China and South Korea in the global battery race.
Batteries are comprised of cells - 192 in the Nissan Leaf; about 7,000 smaller ones in Tesla's Model S - that, combined, form a pack. For now, EV range varies mainly because some have bigger packs than others.
Each cell contains a stack of components sandwiched together.
The "bread" is the electrodes - a positive cathode on one side; a negative anode on the other. They're made of foil - aluminum for the cathode, copper for the anode - coated with lithium and other chemical compounds.
The "filling" is a separator - a piece of mesh or perforated material that keeps the electrodes from touching and causing a catastrophic short circuit.
An electrolyte, usually a liquid, fills the spaces around these parts.
Lithium ions flow back and forth, through the electrolyte and separator, from one electrode to the other.
When the battery is fully charged, they sit in the anodes.
When the car needs power they move to the cathodes, generating electricity. Recharging returns them to the anodes.
It's a complex process that repeatedly converts chemical energy to electrical, and back again.
In recharging, lithium ions must be pulled from the cathode. But ions don't want to be in the anode, says Daniel Abraham, a materials specialist and 20-year veteran at Argonne.
"It's not their normal state, so energy is required to push them there, like carrying water uphill."
When the battery is asked to produce power, they eagerly rush back to be reunited with their lithium family.
Battery performance depends on:
For range: How many ions the electrodes can store. The more ions, the longer it will function before the anode is empty and recharging is required. This capacity is represented as kilowatt-hours - 24 for the Leaf, 85 for the Model S.
For power: How quickly ions move from the anodes to the cathodes. (Power also impacts range: the faster the ions leave the anode, the sooner it empties.)
For longevity: How well the components resist the decay that afflicts all batteries.
Battery researchers face three main problems.
First, EVs place incredible demands in performance, reliability and safety.
Second, everything happens at a microscopic scale, and even tiny changes impact performance. It's a painstaking job to get the recipe right - both the mix of ingredients and how they're combined and applied - and, equally important, be able to repeat it precisely for commercial production.
"The arrangement of atoms dictates behaviour," Abraham says. "How do you get them to sit in the same place every time?"
"You want every one of your batteries to stay the same," adds Ira Bloom, who heads Argonne's diagnostics and analysis lab. "How do you make it identical? Six manufacturers might claim the same materials, but they could have different three-dimensional structures. So performance changes."
Third, no single recipe is best. Improve one quality and another worsens. Increase capacity, for example, and longevity could fall; boost power and you might lose capacity.
Why do batteries decay over time?
When ions enter and leave the electrode coating, they cause expansion and contraction. This leads to cracks and, eventually, less capacity to hold ions.
As well, ions become trapped in the electrodes and separator, reducing the number available to flow back and forth. And the chemical reactions create contaminants that impede their journey.
Ions travel most easily through water-based electrolytes, but these quickly break down under EV loads. Organic solvents are the current compromise: They slow the ions and are flammable, but they can handle high voltages. Solid electrolytes are in the early research stage.
Most anodes are coated in graphite, which has limited storage capacity but withstands cracking. Silicon holds up to 10 times more ions but falls apart more quickly.
The potential breakthrough mentioned at the top of this story involved a California company, Amprius, trying to boost longevity by forming the silicon into nanowires, far thinner than a human hair.
Cathodes use a wide variety of materials. Recipes are tested and adjusted, over and over. Those that survive laboratory tests move up to larger batches.
Promising batches undergo a year of non-stop cycles of use and recharging - to mimic the 10 to 15 years an EV battery must retain at least 80 per cent of its original capacity.
Then, they're dismantled and viewed through 15 instruments to detect cracks, realignment of atoms, unwanted chemical reactions and other alterations.
"We can see what the materials look like and how they change and whether we like the changes," Abraham says.
"If not, we can go back and alter the chemistry."
This development process can't be hurried. So any breakthroughs will likely be one small step at a time.
SOURCE Toronto Star
"This could be the beginning of a breakthrough battery technology for electric vehicles."
I see such breathless news releases often enough that I've learned to file them under "How Nice," and move on.
Since I like electric vehicles, I'd be happy if any breakthrough amounts to anything. And I expect it will happen. But not for a while.
Here's why:
The battery is the Achilles heel of electric vehicles.
Although EVs score high for comfort and performance, and sales are improving, they'll remain a niche market until batteries provide much longer range and lifespan, plus faster recharging, at a substantially lower cost.
Experts say range must at least triple, and costs fall two-thirds, before battery power can go mainstream. Most predict that's at least 20 years away.
Some insist lithium-ion batteries will never do the job. They await dazzling alternatives, none of which is remotely ready for prime time.
I learned why development is so slow during a visit to one of North America's leading battery-research centres, the Argonne National Lab, in a leafy suburb west of Chicago.
It's among the institutions and corporations sharing a bonanza of government cash - including $2 billion announced four years ago by U.S. President Barack Obama - to help the United States catch up to Japan, China and South Korea in the global battery race.
Batteries are comprised of cells - 192 in the Nissan Leaf; about 7,000 smaller ones in Tesla's Model S - that, combined, form a pack. For now, EV range varies mainly because some have bigger packs than others.
Each cell contains a stack of components sandwiched together.
The "bread" is the electrodes - a positive cathode on one side; a negative anode on the other. They're made of foil - aluminum for the cathode, copper for the anode - coated with lithium and other chemical compounds.
The "filling" is a separator - a piece of mesh or perforated material that keeps the electrodes from touching and causing a catastrophic short circuit.
An electrolyte, usually a liquid, fills the spaces around these parts.
Lithium ions flow back and forth, through the electrolyte and separator, from one electrode to the other.
When the battery is fully charged, they sit in the anodes.
When the car needs power they move to the cathodes, generating electricity. Recharging returns them to the anodes.
It's a complex process that repeatedly converts chemical energy to electrical, and back again.
In recharging, lithium ions must be pulled from the cathode. But ions don't want to be in the anode, says Daniel Abraham, a materials specialist and 20-year veteran at Argonne.
"It's not their normal state, so energy is required to push them there, like carrying water uphill."
When the battery is asked to produce power, they eagerly rush back to be reunited with their lithium family.
Battery performance depends on:
For range: How many ions the electrodes can store. The more ions, the longer it will function before the anode is empty and recharging is required. This capacity is represented as kilowatt-hours - 24 for the Leaf, 85 for the Model S.
For power: How quickly ions move from the anodes to the cathodes. (Power also impacts range: the faster the ions leave the anode, the sooner it empties.)
For longevity: How well the components resist the decay that afflicts all batteries.
Battery researchers face three main problems.
First, EVs place incredible demands in performance, reliability and safety.
Second, everything happens at a microscopic scale, and even tiny changes impact performance. It's a painstaking job to get the recipe right - both the mix of ingredients and how they're combined and applied - and, equally important, be able to repeat it precisely for commercial production.
"The arrangement of atoms dictates behaviour," Abraham says. "How do you get them to sit in the same place every time?"
"You want every one of your batteries to stay the same," adds Ira Bloom, who heads Argonne's diagnostics and analysis lab. "How do you make it identical? Six manufacturers might claim the same materials, but they could have different three-dimensional structures. So performance changes."
Third, no single recipe is best. Improve one quality and another worsens. Increase capacity, for example, and longevity could fall; boost power and you might lose capacity.
Why do batteries decay over time?
When ions enter and leave the electrode coating, they cause expansion and contraction. This leads to cracks and, eventually, less capacity to hold ions.
As well, ions become trapped in the electrodes and separator, reducing the number available to flow back and forth. And the chemical reactions create contaminants that impede their journey.
Ions travel most easily through water-based electrolytes, but these quickly break down under EV loads. Organic solvents are the current compromise: They slow the ions and are flammable, but they can handle high voltages. Solid electrolytes are in the early research stage.
Most anodes are coated in graphite, which has limited storage capacity but withstands cracking. Silicon holds up to 10 times more ions but falls apart more quickly.
The potential breakthrough mentioned at the top of this story involved a California company, Amprius, trying to boost longevity by forming the silicon into nanowires, far thinner than a human hair.
Cathodes use a wide variety of materials. Recipes are tested and adjusted, over and over. Those that survive laboratory tests move up to larger batches.
Promising batches undergo a year of non-stop cycles of use and recharging - to mimic the 10 to 15 years an EV battery must retain at least 80 per cent of its original capacity.
Then, they're dismantled and viewed through 15 instruments to detect cracks, realignment of atoms, unwanted chemical reactions and other alterations.
"We can see what the materials look like and how they change and whether we like the changes," Abraham says.
"If not, we can go back and alter the chemistry."
This development process can't be hurried. So any breakthroughs will likely be one small step at a time.
SOURCE Toronto Star
2013-10-01
- Solution to help soybean growers combat a broad range of diseases, including Asian soybean rust
Limburgerhof, Germany – September 30, 2013 – BASF has received registration approval from the Brazilian authorities for Xemium, its latest blockbuster fungicide from the carboxamide family. BASF can now offer Brazilian soybean growers a novel technology and new mode of action to combat and strengthen fungal resistance management.
The first Xemium-based product to be commercialized in Brazil is Orkestra™. With a unique combination of two active ingredients (Xemium and F500®), Orkestra will help growers to combat Asian soybean rust, one of the most damaging threats to soybean yields. It combines two different modes of action, which provides growers a built-in resistance management tool. Furthermore, Orkestra delivers benefits that increase plant health, offered under the AgCelence® brand: With Orkestra, soybean plants can transform water, light and nutrients into energy and grains more efficiently.
“We are pleased that Xemium is now available to Brazilian soybean growers, which means that we deliver on our promise to offer novel solutions to those growers who ensure the global availability of soybeans,” said Rolf Reinecke, Vice President, Global Strategic Marketing Fungicides, BASF Crop Protection. “Xemium builds on our long and innovative history in the area of carboxamide fungicides, which began in 1974. We will keep investing in this and other areas of fungicide research, so that we can continue helping growers increase the quality and quantity of their yields.”
Xemium-based products are planned to be launched in more than 100 crops in 50 countries around the globe. Xemium is expected to achieve a peak sales potential in excess of €400 million and will further strengthen BASF’s leading position in the fungicide market.
About BASF’s Crop Protection division
With sales of around €4.7 billion in 2012, BASF’s Crop Protection division provides innovative solutions in crop protection, turf and ornamental plants, pest control and public health. Its portfolio also includes technologies for seed treatment and biological control as well as solutions to manage water, nutrients and plant stress. BASF’s Crop Protection division is a leading innovator that supports growers to optimize agricultural production, improve their business efficiency and enhance the quality of life for a growing world population. Further information can be found on the web at www.agro.basf.com or follow us on our social media channels.
About BASF
BASF is the world’s leading chemical company: The Chemical Company. Its portfolio ranges from chemicals, plastics, performance products and crop protection products to oil and gas. We combine economic success with environmental protection and social responsibility. Through science and innovation, we enable our customers in nearly every industry to meet the current and future needs of society. Our products and solutions contribute to conserving resources, ensuring nutrition and improving quality of life. We have summed up this contribution in our corporate purpose: We create chemistry for a sustainable future. BASF had sales of €72.1 billion in 2012 and more than 110,000 employees as of the end of the year. BASF shares are traded on the stock exchanges in Frankfurt (BAS), London (BFA) and Zurich (AN). Further information on BASF is available on the Internet at www.basf.com .