Podcast: Halloween Edition of Chemical Industry News Roundup

Welcome to the Halloween edition of Distilled News. I'm Jonathan Katz, executive editor of Chemical Processing. Let's look at some of the major developments from October.

Remember HAL 9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey? "I'm sorry, Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that." Well, in today's chemical industry, AI is saying the opposite of HAL—and it's doing things researchers never thought possible this quickly.

At the CIEX conference in Indianapolis last month, Ryan Murphy, the technology manager for Syensqo told attendees that the company is using AI to search through 4 million molecules to find a single polymer for a new product. The project took 18 months, significantly shorter than traditional methods, which would have required five to six years of research, according to Murphy.

A.N. Sreeram, Dow's chief technology officer, talked about how his company is now producing over 10,000 samples per week using robotics—double the speed of previous product development timelines. At 3M, machine learning is collecting rheology data two to four times faster, Guy Joly, 3M's vice president of R&D told conference attendees. AI is also an important tool in the company’s search for alternatives to PFAS before 3M’s complete exit from PFAS manufacturing at year's end. And BASF has already secured patents for new catalyst formulations discovered through AI analysis of published literature and internal databases, according to .  Amit Gokhale, BASF's director of process and chemical engineering R&D.

The shift represents a fundamental change in how chemical R&D operates. What used to take years now takes months. And it's happening just as companies face mounting pressure to develop more sustainable materials.  In fact, Gokhale told me during the CIEX conference that within four to five years, AI tools will be reconfiguring entire manufacturing plant processes.

We turn to some ominous signs from the chemical market with several majors announcing they’re scaling back operations due to economic headwinds. UK-based Ineos announced Oct. 6 plans to close two production units in Rheinberg, Germany, resulting in the loss of 175 jobs. The closures are driven by high energy and carbon costs combined with limited tariff protections, according to the company. 

Trinseo PLC also announced Oct. 6 plans to permanently close two facilities in Italy, including a methyl methacrylate (MMA) production plant and an acetone cyanohydrin (ACH) facility. Trinseo also is looking to close its Schkopau, Germany, polystyrene plant and consolidate the remaining polystyrene operations into its Tessenderlo, Belgium, site. The company said this action, if approved by the plant’s works council, would further optimize European production.

And ExxonMobil is delaying plans to build a $10 billion plastics plant along the Texas Gulf Coast, according to a report in the Midland Reporter-Telegram. The company cited current market conditions as the primary reason for the decision. The facility would have produced up to 3 million tons of polyethylene pellets annually, according to the Midland Reporter Telegram.  

We now turn to legislative news, with the American Chemistry Council calling on President Trump to closely review a proposed merger between Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern. The industry group sent an Oct. 16 letter to the president, signed by 40 chemical manufacturing CEOs.

The proposed merger would be the largest rail merger ever reviewed by the Surface Transportation Board (STB).

The letter warns that combining the two railroads could reduce transportation options, raise shipping costs and harm U.S. manufacturing competitiveness. “Fewer railroads will mean fewer transportation options, and the merger threatens to make our U.S. manufacturing sites less competitive with the rest of the world,” the letter stated.

ACC said the merger would create a transcontinental railroad controlling nearly half of U.S. rail traffic, further concentrating market power in an industry already dominated by four major carriers. The group cited prior rail consolidations that led to service disruptions and higher costs.

“President Trump has made real progress rebuilding American manufacturing,” said ACC President and CEO Chris Jahn in a statement. “Let’s not let a monopoly undo it. We need a better deal — one that enhances competition between railroads, lowers costs, grows jobs, and strengthens America.”

The council urged the Surface Transportation Board to uphold its merger standards and reject any deal that fails to improve rail-to-rail competition and service for U.S. manufacturers.

And finally, we congratulate this year’s Nobel Prize in chemistry winners. Three scientists received the 2025 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for developing metal-organic frameworks, porous materials that show potential for addressing environmental issues, including PFAS mitigation.

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded the prize Oct. 8 to Susumu Kitagawa, Richard Robson and Omar Yaghi. Metal-organic frameworks, or MOFs, are characterized by metal ions and molecules organized to form crystals that contain large cavities.

Chemists can alter the building blocks used in MOFs to capture and store specific substances, drive chemical reactions or conduct electricity.

“Metal–organic frameworks have enormous potential, bringing previously unforeseen opportunities for custom-made materials with new functions,” said Heiner Linke, chair of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry.

Robson, a professor of chemistry at the University of Melbourne in Australia, began his work on MOFs in 1989 when he combined positively charged copper ions with a four-armed molecule that created a well-ordered crystal filled with cavities. 

The molecular construction showed potential but was unstable and collapsed easily. Over the next decade, Kitagawa and Yaghi made several discoveries that resulted in a more stable design. 

Kitagawa, a distinguished professor at Kyoto University in Japan, showed that gases can flow in and out of the constructions and predicted that MOFs could be made flexible. Meanwhile, Yaghi, a professor of chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley, created a stable MOF and showed that it can be modified using rational design, giving it new and desirable properties.

Yaghi eventually coined the term “metal-organic frameworks” in a Nature article, according to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

Since their discoveries, chemists have built tens of thousands of different MOFs.
Potential future applications for MOFs include separating PFAS from water, breaking down traces of pharmaceuticals in the environment, capturing carbon dioxide or harvesting water from desert air. 

That wraps up this Halloween edition of Distilled News. Thanks for listening, and I'll be back next month with more news from the chemical industry.