Ineos bought the other major part of BP’s petrochemical business, its aromatic and acetyl operations, for $5 billion in 2021. As part of the deal with Sinopec, Ineos is forming an ABS joint venture. This partnership will include a plant that Ineos’s Styrolution unit is building in Ningbo, China. The firms plan to build two additional plants.
by Alexander H. Tullo | August 08, 2022
It helped lead a $21 million venture capital investment in Novoloop, a California-based start-up that is developing a technology to convert postconsumer polyethylene into thermoplastic polyurethanes and other chemicals. 41 Eastman Chemical 2021 chemical sales: $10.5 billion Eastman Chemical is taking another swing at making acetylated wood.
by Alexander H. Tullo | July 24, 2022
Methylation and acetylation are the two most frequent modifications; they regulate gene expression by alternating between transcriptional activation and repression. Andrew J. Andrews is correct in saying that “we have to change our thinking from simple on-off switches and inhibitors like we’ve done for years to more complicated systems.”
July 14, 2022
Instead of putting an acetyl group on the indoline nitrogen to form diaboline, the enzyme adds a malonyl group to make prestrychnine. “It’s one amino acid that changes the whole pathway from diaboline to strychnine,” O’Connor says. Yi Tang, an expert in biosynthesis at the University of California, Los Angeles, says in an email that figuring out the biosynthesis “lays the foundation to engineered biosynthesis of strychnine and related compounds using modern synthetic biology tools.”
by Bethany Halford | July 14, 2022
For example, acetylation is a dynamic modification that comes on and off relatively quickly. Acetyl groups add positive charges that help neutralize the nucleosomes’ negatively charged surfaces. That neutralization helps peel the histone tails away from the nucleosome surface and makes them accessible to other proteins that bind to the acetylations.
by Celia Henry Arnaud | June 06, 2022
Acetyl chemicals remain enormously profitable for the company. At Dow, results showed solid improvement, but profit margins in its core packaging plastic business thinned because of escalating raw material costs. Eastman Chemical and DuPont posted modest declines in earnings while sales rose. The challenge for chemical makers, particularly those in Europe, has been keeping up with climbing costs.
by Alexander H. Tullo | May 13, 2022
—Eastman, Accsys to make acetylated wood “” Accoya USA, a joint venture of Accsys Technologies and Eastman Chemical, plans to build an acetylated wood plant at Eastman’s site in Kingsport, Tennessee. Acetylated lumber has been treated with acetic anhydride, which increases its moisture resistance. Accsys calls itselfthe world’s only producer of acetylated wood, which it currently makes in the Netherlands.
by Alexander H. Tullo | March 19, 2022
In the process, Celanese’s more commodity-like acetyl chemical business will become “a smaller amount of the total pie.” Acetyls accounted for 64% of the firm’s sales in 2021. In a report, Vertical Research Partners analyst Kevin W. McCarthy calls the purchase an “attractive strategic fit” for Celanese.
by Alexander H. Tullo | February 24, 2022