Reporting on the business and technologies
driving today's global industrial gas industry
Air Products has set up the following link to access materials related to their offer to acquire Airgas. These materials will be updated periodically.
http://www.airgasoffer.com/
Airgas has also set up a page to view materials related to the offer at the link below.
On January 22, 2010, the NRC of the National Academies released the prepublication Helium Reserve Report addressing the impact of Selling the Nation’s Helium Reserve. Recommendations on improving the effectiveness of the Federal Helium Program addressed pricing mechanisms for the sale of Federal Helium, long-term management of the reserve, providing Helium for science and research communities, collection of helium information, and long-range planning for future needs. We are interested in feedback on the committee recommendations and the report.
Our December issue of CryoGas International highlights green process technologies that reduce greenhouse gas emissions that are alleged to cause global warming - so the recent scandal in the news “Climategate” is timely.
Please go to www.telegraph.co.uk to read Christopher Booker’s column in the UK Telegraph - “Climate change: this is the worst scientific scandal of our generation.” Booker provides a brief history behind this scandal and outlines the “three threads” in the leaked emails which inflamed this controvery and shocked observers across the globe.
According to Solar Daily’s new article on October 26th, “Researchers at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory studied the costs of solar photovoltaic power systems and found the average cost of such systems dropped by more than 4 percent last year.” In the US, Solar power systems installation costs declined by more than 30 percent in the past ten years. For the full story, go to Solar Daily.
We reported on Photovoltaic Solar Energy as part of our Electronics Market Update in the August/September 2009 issue of CryoGas International.
According to Solar Daily, half Of All Solar Panels Made This Year Won’t Be Installed In 2009. The main cause is the the “collapse in demand due to the decision by Spain-which accounted for 50 percent of worldwide installations in 2008-to change its feed-in-tariff policies,” said Henning Wicht, senior director and principal analyst for photovoltaics at iSuppli. To read the full story go to www.solardaily.com
Is mass commercialization of hydrogen a high priority in your country? Are safety and regulatory issues barriers preventing mass commercialization from happening? Is the public’s perception of hydrogen that it is an unsafe energy carrier?
Come to an important International Hydrogen Safety Codes and Standards Workshop and learn the truth about hydrogen technology as it pertains to safety and compliance with regulatory codes and standards! The Workshop is being hosted by the Partnership for Advancing the Transition to Hydrogen (PATH), www.HPATH.org, and will be held in conjunction with the World Hydrogen Technologies Convention in New Delhi, India on Saturday, 29 August 2009 from 9:00 am - 1:30 pm. It is being sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy.
The focus of the June issue of Cryogas International is on Sustainability. For our industry, hydrogen represents an important product and market that is directly involved in creating sustainable energy sources. As our review of the recent National Hydrogen Association (NHA) Conference and Expo held in Columbia, SC indicates, while the development of hydrogen infrastructure continues to be strong, funding for its R&D programs faces increasing competition from other alternative energy options. Read the rest of this entry »
During 2006 and 2007, worldwide helium supply was very tightly balanced with demand and remained that way for the first three quarters of 2008. The balance was struck because ExxonMobil, the largest private supplier of helium in the world, was producing at close to capacity, and the RasGas (Qatar) helium plant was coming up to higher production rates. In addition, the withdrawal of crude helium from BLM’s Cliffside, TX reserve was occurring at planned rates.
Facing Scandal, Head of Climate Research Lab to Temporarily Step Down - See story on Fox News website. http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,578486,00.html