License industry

The electrowinning process developed by Ginatta (34) has been purchased by M.A. Industries (Atlanta, Georgia), and the process is available for licensing (qv). MA Industries have also developed a process to upgrade the polypropylene chips from the battery breaking operation to pellets for use by the plastics industry. Additionally, East Penn (Lyons Station, Pennsylvania), has developed a solvent-extraction process to purify the spent acid from lead—acid batteries and use the purified acid in battery production (35). 

Displacement-purge forms the basis for most simulated continuous countercurrent systems (see hereafter) such as the UOP Sorbex processes. UOP has licensed close to one hundred Sorbex units for its family of processes Parex to separate p-xylene from C3 aromatics, Molex tor /i-paraffin from branched and cyclic hydrocarbons, Olex for olefins from paraffin, Sarex for fruc tose from dextrose plus polysaccharides, Cymex forp- or m-cymene from cymene isomers, and Cresex for p- or m-cresol from cresol isomers. Toray Industries Aromax process is another for the production of p-xylene [Otani, Chem. Eng., 80(9), 106-107, (1973)]. Illinois Water Treatment [Making Wave.s in Liquid Processing, Illinois Water Treatment Company, IWT Adsep System, Rockford, IL, 6(1), (1984)] and Mitsubishi [Ishikawa, Tanabe, and Usui, U.S. Patent 4,182,633 (1980)] have also commercialized displacement-purge processes for the separation of fructose from dextrose. 

Flood Event Frequency Estimates were developed from flooding events in nuclear power plants with adjustments for plant-specific features and data. The data were from the IPE Surry flood analysis, industry sources, and licensing event reports (LERs). Some plant specific models were developed for the circulating water (CW) and service water (SW) lines... 

Disposal of industrial effluents to controlled landfill sites is generally confined to slurries and sludge. The quantity and composition of the wastes acceptable for disposal is controlled by licenses issued by the waste disposal authority. 

In the past, USA competing companies could not cooperate, such as in R D, without breaching antitrust laws. Patent pooling, such as collecting and cross-licensing patents, was precluded. Today the antitrust laws are reviewed, interpreted, and enforced less stringently, which permits industrial cooperation in selected and specific areas where poling does exist. This explanation is a simplistic summation to a very complicated situation. 

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) also accept submissions prepared according to the CTD format. However, they have not directly incorporated the CTD format into US regulatory requirements, which are detailed in Title 21 CFR, Part 514.50 in the case of a New Drug Application (NDA), or Title 21 CFR Part 601.2 (a) in the case of a Biologies License Application (BLA). Rather, they have introduced the CTD format via Guidance for Industry documents. The correlation between the requirements in 21 CFR Part 514.50 and the CTD format is shown in Table 6.2. 

Two options are being developed at the moment. The first is to produce 1,2-propanediol (propylene glycol) from glycerol. 1,2-Propanediol has a number of industrial uses, including as a less toxic alternative to ethylene glycol in anti-freeze. Conventionally, 1,2-propanediol is made from a petrochemical feedstock, propylene oxide. The new process uses a combination of a copper-chromite catalyst and reactive distillation. The catalyst operates at a lower temperature and pressure than alternative systems 220°C compared to 260°C and 10 bar compared to 150 bar. The process also produces fewer by-products, and should be cheaper than petrochemical routes at current prices for natural glycerol. The first commercial plant is under construction and the process is being actively licensed to other companies. 

I mentioned that the automotive composites consortium is working with NIST, under one of the CRADAs. CRADA once an obscure acronym, has become very popular in Washington, DC. If federal research initiatives are to be fully successful, the results of this research must be transferred to industry, where they can form the basis for new and enhanced products and processes. Traditional mechanisms exist (such as contracts, patent licensing, and the like), but I don t think any of them are quite as powerful as the CRADA... 

Cases of the development of proprietary materials for in-house use are found in certain industries. For example, Pratt—Whitney initially developed high-temperature alloys for their own jet engines. Since that time, they have licensed some of their materials technology to other manufacturers, but the market advantage to them early on was significant. 

Fundamental to the support for nuclear energy is the new attitude in the industry itself. Nuclear electricity producers are adapting well to the onset of competition in the marketplace. We are seeing consolidation, nuclear plant purchases, and the pursuit of license renewals. In this new environment, the U.S. nuclear industry is entertaining something of a renaissance and beginning to take credit for its accomplishments. 

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