CHEMICAL MANAGEMENT
Rinchem Company, Inc | December 02, 2021
Rinchem Company, Inc., a global semiconductor services company, recently acquired two Dallas-area chemical warehouses from one of their competitors, LeSaint Logistics.
"Rinchem is continually working to set the standard in our industry. We have often competed with LeSaint in the chemical market, so it speaks volumes that Rinchem is in a position to purchase these two Dallas warehouses. With acquisitions like these, we are further solidifying our position as the premier 4PL partner in the semiconductor industry."
Rob Walker, Vice President of Finance at Rinchem
The Albuquerque-based company has seen a lot of growth in 2021. In the past year alone, Rinchem has expanded five different warehouses and secured business from one of the largest semiconductor companies in the industry. With this acquisition, Rinchem will go from 1 to 3 warehouses located in Dallas, TX. Rinchem plans to retain all employees who were previously employed by LeSaint.
About Rinchem
Rinchem Company, Inc. is the largest network of chemical and gas distribution centers globally with over 4 billion pounds of chemicals and gases safely handled annually. They set the standard in creating and managing safe and efficient supply chains for high purity, pre-packaged chemicals and gases. Rinchem applies four decades of expertise, industry thought leadership, and logistics transparency in order to provide the most reliable, efficient, and cost-effective solutions for its customers. The primary industries that Rinchem serves include pharmaceutical, biotech, semiconductor and aerospace.
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CHEMICAL TECHNOLOGY
Kebotix, SCM | December 01, 2021
Capitalizing on each other's areas of expertise to advance materials innovation, Kebotix, a U.S.-based technology platform company that transforms discovery of new chemicals and materials through AI and robotics, and SCM, a Netherlands-based computational chemistry software company specializing in accurate property prediction methods through atomistic modeling, have announced a strategic partnership.
The collaboration between Kebotix and SCM is intended to enable innovative customers to drastically scale up and computationally screen far greater quantities of molecules and materials than via today's laborious and costly norm of trial and error.
The two companies believe that integrating Kebotix's platform with SCM's software makes for a unique and powerful combination that will spawn faster and cost-effective new materials for the benefit of a host of industries and a world in need of sustainable solutions to life-threatening challenges.
"The complementary expertise of SCM in computational chemistry and Kebotix's experience in cloud-based AI-driven workflows offer a radically new way to speed up computational research with the goal of delivering new molecules and materials with improved properties much faster than the current state of the art,"
SCM CEO Dr. Stan van Gisbergen.
Added Dr. Fedor Goumans, SCM's chief customer officer: "Currently, our industrial users in diverse areas such as petrochemistry, batteries and electronics are already advancing their research using our various atomistic methods. The new collaboration will accelerate virtual materials exploration, reducing costs and time to market. The combined platform will also help experimental researchers with no computational chemistry experience."
Active learning enables exploration of new areas of chemical space that maximize the possibility to find the best new candidate materials, according to the companies. Moreover, they said, integrating atomistic simulations with advanced AI into a scalable, flexible and secure platform empowers innovators to find the best solution more quickly and with fewer resources.
"Massive accelerations can be achieved by integrating SCM's four-decade-long history of making and supporting atomistic modeling software with Kebotix's proven advanced machine learning techniques," said Dr. Christoph Kreisbeck, Kebotix chief commercial officer. "Using the ML methods that greatly attributed to Kebotix earning "Technology Pioneer" status by the new structures can be proposed to explore an even larger part of the chemical space, potentially leading to exciting new solutions that are commercially viable and meet global sustainability goals."
Markets expected to benefit by this partnership include organic electronics, particularly in the organic light-emitting diodes space, along with batteries, semiconductors, polymers and catalysts, according to Kreisbeck.
About Kebotix
Kebotix transforms discovery and development of breakthrough chemicals and materials for the 21st century, adding certainty to science by using today's most advanced artificial intelligence, machine learning and robotics. By automating the scientific method using a proprietary closed-loop R&D process to predict and produce new chemistries in a self-driving lab, Kebotix's digital platform empowers lab researchers. Advancements include increased ROI and time-to-market being accelerated from years to mere months. From smarter windows and greener packaging to cleaner pigments and safer pesticides, Kebotix creates materials for a new age of innovation and a better, more sustainable place to live.
About SCM
SCM's core strengths are related to atomistic scale modeling of molecules and periodic structures in chemistry and materials science. SCM's Amsterdam Modeling Suite (AMS) covers multiple methods including density functional theory, reactive molecular dynamics and fluid thermodynamics. The company's domain experts have a long track record in software development to target challenging real-life problems by enabling high-throughput and multiscale simulations. SCM, which stands for Software for Chemistry & Materials, collaborates with its academic and industry partners to integrate the latest computational methods in its efficient and easy-to-use software suite, thus enabling solutions to challenging research problems and, in a broader context, tackle societal challenges of current and future generations.
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CHEMICAL TECHNOLOGY
I.C.I.S | May 13, 2021
LyondellBasell plans to significantly expand its global presence in both mechanical and molecular (chemical) recycling of waste plastics, with the United States, China, and ultimately India as the next priorities, according to its CEO on Tuesday.
LyondellBasell and SUEZ extended their Quality Circular Plastics (QCP) joint venture focusing on mechanical recycling in December 2020 with the acquisition of Belgium-based plastics recycling firm TIVACO, increasing the overall ability for recycled plastics to about 55,000 tonnes/year from 35,000 tonnes/year.
LyondellBasell aims to produce 2 million tonnes of recycled or renewable PE and PP each year by 2030.
In Liaoning province, LyondellBasell and Bora have a 50/50 joint venture cracker as well as downstream polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP) facilities.
Plastics recycling is seen as a growth business by the company, and significant capital investments will be made in the future.
CHEMICAL RECYCLING
LyondellBasell has a pilot plant in Ferrara, Italy, that uses its proprietary MoReTec technology, which involves catalysis.
The plant transforms mixed plastics waste into pyrolysis oil, which is then fed into naphtha crackers. However, volumes are small at this point.
LyondellBasell began selling chemically recycled PE and PP under the brand name CirculenRevive in April, using third-party pyrolysis oil.
CirculenRevive products are now available in Europe and will be available in the United States later this year.
The main advantages of molecular recycling include greater scale, less need for plastic waste sorting, and the same output as virgin plastic that can be used in all applications.
The firm will achieve “medium industrial scale” in chemical recycling by 2025 and will “scale up to very large plants” by the second half of the decade.
Furthermore, chemical recycling plants will not be limited to Europe, where naphtha crackers are abundant.
LyondellBasell runs mixed feed crackers in Channelview, Texas, as well as Wesseling and Munchsmunster, Germany.
Significant amounts of waste plastics would have to be funneled to the site, so logistics and infrastructure will be critical to construct large molecular recycling plants.
A medium-scale molecular recycling plant could cost between $200 million and $300 million, but this is an early estimate.
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