US Patent Issued to Ascend Performance Materials Operations on March 17 for "Acetonitrile separation process" (Texas Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., March 17 -- United States Patent no. 12,577,198, issued on March 17, was assigned to Ascend Performance Materials Operations LLC (Houston).

"Acetonitrile separation process" was invented by Pascal Bolomey (Houston), Kyle Kissell (Houston), Basil Michaels (Houston), Nick Sparkman (Houston) and Zhensheng Ding (Houston).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A process for producing acetonitrile, the process comprising dehydrating a feedstock stream comprising acetonitrile, acrylonitrile, allyl alcohol, and water (and optionally methanol) in a dehydration (first) column to yield a dehydrated acetonitrile stream comprising acetonitrile and acrylonitrile, less than 1 wt % allyl alcohol, and...