Solvay believes its ongoing research into silica products will help to further improve tyre energy efficiency and performance.


Here the silica products are used to improve tyres’ rolling resistance, something that the company says typically improves fuel consumption by 5-7%. The company has invested in a new 85,000 t/y plant to produce several ranges of Zeosil in Poland, including Zeosil Premium – a new generation of product that will further improve tyre energy efficiency and performance.


Like BASF, Solvay also has an interest in OLED technology. It has already demonstrated OLED lighting tiles and is working to increase their area. Many current OLED devices are made at pilot scale by depositing many layers on glass using a vacuum process. Working with the specialist R&D Holst Centre in Eindhoven, the Netherlands, Solvay has been able to deposit several layers of the OLED by solution processing, which brings the use of printing technologies to produce OLEDs closer.


Use of printing technologies on flexible 10 www.engineerlive.com


substrates will enable large-scale manufacturing of OLEDs for general lighting applications, and will bring some additional features such as thin, flexible and potentially transparent light sources that could be integrated in ceiling, walls, windows, etc.


One of Dow Benelux’s key nanotechnology strategies involves working with Utrecht University to develop a process to produce ethylene and propylene from fast growing trees and grasses. The difference between this and other bio-based solutions is that the new products have exactly the same structures and properties as those manufactured by the traditional oil-based routes and so can be exact substitutes for them.


The key to the process lies in new kinds of iron catalyst that consist of tiny nanoparticles separated from each other on carbon nanofibres. In laboratory tests the catalysts have proved what the company describes as highly effective at converting a biomass-derived synthesis gas into ethylene and propylene, notably without producing a large amount of unwanted methane. l


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