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3 weeks ago | 
thechemicalengineer.com | Sam Baker
BRITISH STEEL has closed its redundancy consultation for the two blast furnaces in Scunthorpe, UK, meaning 2,700 jobs will remain at the site for now. In a statement yesterday, the company said they had secured a “stable supply of raw materials to both its blast furnaces for the short term”. There were initial fears that a “Salamander tap” – where slag and molten iron are drained from the base – would be needed to shut down the Queen Bess blast furnace.
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4 weeks ago | 
thechemicalengineer.com | Sam Baker
CEMENT maker Heidelberg Materials has been granted planning permission to integrate carbon capture and storage (CCS) into its Padeswood cement works in North Wales. Heidelberg Materials’ plans are the first to be approved in the UK for CCS-enabled cement production. The company aims to make Padeswood the UK’s first net zero cement plant, with operations expected to start in 2029. The cement industry alone accounts for 8% of global greenhouse gas emissions.
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4 weeks ago | 
thechemicalengineer.com | Sam Baker
MODELLING by chemical engineers in the US and Norway suggests that liquid air energy storage (LAES) could be a more cost-effective option than existing techniques. Researchers at MIT and the Norwegian University of Science and Technology found it could be considerably cheaper than lithium-ion batteries and pumped hydropower. LAES works by taking excess electricity from the grid to cool and liquify air which is then stored at ambient pressure.
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1 month ago | 
thechemicalengineer.com | Sam Baker
FIRE AND RESCUE authorities in the Malaysian state of Selangor have confirmed that at least 63 people are being treated in hospital following a pipeline fire. The Selangor deputy police chief Mohamad Zaini Abu Hassan told a press conference this morning they were being treated for “burns, respiratory issues and other injuries”, while 49 more have reported injuries that didn’t require hospital treatment. The fire department has also confirmed that at least 190 homes have been damaged by the fire.
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1 month ago | 
thechemicalengineer.com | Sam Baker
BRITISH chemicals manufacturer Croda has opened a factory in the US to produce lipids that will be used in vaccines. The new 23,860 ft2 facility sits on an existing site in Lamar, Pennsylvania and will specialise in producing lipids for drug delivery systems for mRNA vaccines, new cancer treatments, and other therapies.
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1 month ago | 
thechemicalengineer.com | Sam Baker
UK ENVIRONMENT secretary Steve Reed yesterday unveiled the government’s ambitious plans to reduce industrial waste in a speech to business leaders in London. Speaking to leaders from Mace, British Land, Jaguar Land Rover, the Food and Drink Federation and the Environmental Services Association, Reed said he intends to make “reuse and repair the norm” and to end what he calls the UK’s “throwaway society”.
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1 month ago | 
thechemicalengineer.com | Sam Baker
BRITISH STEEL today announced plans to close its two blast furnaces in Scunthorpe, UK, with the loss of around 2,700 jobs. The announcement follows reports that Jingye, British Steel’s Chinese owner, rejected an offer of £500m (US$647m) from the government on Monday to rescue the loss-making company. Jingye is believed to have requested at least £1bn from the government – double the amount Tata Steel secured for an electric arc furnace at Port Talbot last year.
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1 month ago | 
thechemicalengineer.com | Sam Baker
OIL AND GAS giants ExxonMobil and Woodside have approved a A$350m (US$220m) investment to launch new offshore gas drilling projects in the Bass Strait to supply the eastern states of Australia. Woodside’s vice-president Liz Westcott said the 50-50 joint venture with Exxon is “committed to supplying as much gas as we can” to Australia’s East Coast Gas System (ECGS), which serves all states and territories barring Western Australia and covers the vast majority of the country’s population.
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1 month ago | 
thechemicalengineer.com | Sam Baker
THE CARGO ship that crashed into an anchored jet fuel carrier near Hull, England last week was transporting containers of microplastic pellets which have washed up on shore following the collision. The UK Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA) on Monday confirmed sitings of plastic nurdles, classed as a microplastic, in the waters around the Norfolk and Lincolnshire coast in England and at “disparate locations along the shore” between Old Hunstanton and Wells-next-the-Sea in Norfolk.
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1 month ago | 
thechemicalengineer.com | Sam Baker
BRITISH pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca has struck a deal of up to US$1bn to acquire a biotech company specialising in cell therapy for cancer treatment. The purchase is expected to close in the second quarter of 2025 which will see Belgium-based EsoBiotec become a wholly owned subsidiary of AstraZeneca. Existing cell therapies require extraction of immune system cells which are then genetically modified externally before being reinserted into the body.
