Chemicals

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Trucking company Schneider National Inc. is looking to expand its role in chemical distribution through an investment in a startup that is building an online marketplace for industrial raw materials.The Green Bay, Wis.-based carrier led a Series A funding round for ChemDirect Inc. that will give Schneider a minority stake in the business and make the trucking company a key logistics connection for the digital operation. The terms of the investment, which would give Schneider a 12% to 13%…

South Korea’s Lotte Chemical Corporation said it would invest an additional KRW140bn (US$108m) at its Daesan plant, 75km southwest of Seoul, to expand the range of solvents it produces for electrolyte used in the production of lithium ion batteries for electric vehicles (EVs). This is in addition to the KRW210bn investment already announced to increase electrolyte solvent production capacity at the plant. Electrolyte is…

LUDWIGSHAFEN, Germany—For years, BASF SEone of the world’s largest chemicals companies, built its business model around cheap and plentiful Russian natural gas, which it uses to generate power and as feedstock for products that make it into toothpaste, medicines and cars.Today, dwindling Russian gas supplies are proving a threat to the company’s vast manufacturing hub here—the world’s largest integrated chemical complex spanning some 200 plants. Earlier this month, Russia started throttling back its supply of gas to…

The U.S. Supreme Court this week denied an effort by Bayer AG BAYRY -1.11% to stem thousands of lawsuits alleging its Roundup weedkiller caused cancer among landscapers and residential gardeners. On Alan Meadows’s Tennessee farm, it was business as usual.As the top U.S. court declined Tuesday to hear Bayer’s appeal of a 2018 jury verdict linking the company’s herbicide to non-Hodgkin lymphoma in a California plaintiff, Mr. Meadows said he was spraying the chemical on his…

The European Parliament approved legislation to tax imports based on the greenhouse gases emitted to make them, a plan that is sending shudders through the global trading system.The legislation backed by the parliament on Wednesday broadens a previous proposal for the tariff to include some chemical makers. It also sets a faster timeline for implementation than the earlier proposal, which was drafted by the European Commission, the European Union’s executive arm. Now the legislation must be reconciled with a version that…

Getting an organ from donor to recipient is a race against time, with many going to waste. Now, researchers in Australia have identified new cryoprotectants that could preserve organs and tissues for much longer without damaging them.Freezing living cells is a good way to preserve them for much longer than at room temperature, but traditional freezing damages those cells as ice crystals form. That’s why your frozen and thawed strawberries or steak are always a bit mushy, but of course the bigger problem is that it can…

Most top executives say they think a recession is looming or already here, according to a new survey, reflecting a rapid deterioration of the economic outlook among business leaders.More than 60% of CEOs expect a recession in their geographic region in the next 12 to 18 months, according to a survey of 750 CEOs and other C-suite executives released Friday by the Conference Board, a business research firm. An additional 15% think the region of the world where their company operates is already in a recession.…

Artist’s concept of the material. The actual material is full of holes and slightly resembles Swiss cheese. The holes allow it to attract benzene molecules, a toxic pollutant.The new material can capture small quantities of benzene, a harmful pollutant, from the air while using less energy than previous materialsA new material that can remove harmful substances from the air was created by scientists at the University of Limerick in Ireland.According to the researchers, the substance uses far less energy than current…

Scientists have been raising growing concerns for decades over the use of toxic “forever chemicals,” so called because their strong molecular bonds can take hundreds of years to completely break down in the environment. Widely used in consumer products such as cookware and clothing, these substances are turning up everywhere from drinking water to our bloodstream. And now researchers are warning of yet another—and so far underrecognized—source of these troubling toxins: common pesticides. Nearly 70 percent of all…