TYLER, Texas, Jan. 19, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- New Hope Energy announced that it has signed a multi-year offtake agreement with Dow (NYSE: DOW) to provide pyrolysis oil feedstock derived from recycled plastics collected in North America.

"This partnership with Dow signals that the world's most innovative and successful companies are confident in our circular technology," said Rusty Combs, Chief Executive Officer of New Hope Energy. "We are excited to partner with Dow and support their effort to expand its global capabilities for circular plastics."

The Lummus New Hope Plastics Pyrolysis Technology converts end of life plastic, diverting the waste away from landfills or the environment, into feedstock, which Dow will use to produce circular plastics. The technology is part of a partnership formed in 2020 between New Hope and Lummus Technology, combining Lummus' ability to license, scale-up and further develop process technology and New Hope's operational experience and waste conversion technology.

"We congratulate our partner, New Hope Energy, on this significant achievement," said Leon de Bruyn, President and Chief Executive Officer of Lummus Technology. "Since announcing our strategic partnership, we have collaborated together to scale up the technology to provide larger quantities of circular oils to the market. New Hope's innovation, entrepreneurial spirit and ambition to lead the solution for waste plastics aligns very well with our culture at Lummus, and has led to a successful, productive and strong partnership."

New Hope Energy will produce the feedstock for Dow at its Trinity Oaks facility in Tyler, Texas. In addition, New Hope is in the process of expanding the existing Trinity Oaks production facility, utilizing technology jointly developed with Lummus. Final commissioning for the plant expansion is planned for late 2022.

About New Hope New Hope Technologies is the technology affiliate of New Hope Energy, a Tyler, Texas-based company established to create solutions to the plastic waste crisis facing the world. New Hope Energy is a vertically integrated organization which operates an advanced chemical recycling plant for converting plastic and solid waste into renewable resources to facilitate the circular economy. New Hope is currently working with national brands and major oil companies to help them meet their sustainability goals. To learn more, visit https://newhopeenergy.com.

About Lummus Technology Lummus Technology is the global leader in developing process technologies that make modern life possible and focus on a more sustainable, low carbon future. Lummus is a master licensor of clean energy, petrochemical, refining, gas processing and renewable technologies, and a supplier of catalysts, proprietary equipment, digitalization and related lifecycle services to customers worldwide. To learn more about Lummus, visit www.LummusTechnology.com.

SOURCE New Hope Energy

After reading my blog post in PlasticsToday, New Hope Energy Program Manager Lee Royal contacted me to explain the company’s situation. After a long conversation, I’m satisfied that New Hope Energy is operating 24/7 as it claims, and is selling its products to customers including Chevron Phillips, per New Hope’s latest release.

According to Royal, the fire that broke out at the Trinity Oaks Tyler plant in Tyler, TX, last May was a minor incident and the company was back up and running the next day. He admits that the company has kept a very low profile over the past few years due to the fact that the Trinity Oaks plant is at capacity.

In fact, capacity is New Hope’s biggest problem, according to Royal. The demand for solutions to the plastic waste problem is creating a shortage of technology to deal with it. A study by the American Chemistry Council a few years ago mentioning New Hope’s technology resulted in the plant being “inundated” with requests from CPGs and other companies with an interest in finding a solution to their sustainability issues, said Royal.

“We’re progressing along the path and we’re not trying to hide,” Royal explained to PlasticsToday regarding the company’s failure to return requests for comment.

“Our niche is this technology which we spent years developing, and companies are buying our product, but the quantity demand is so huge that we need to scale up. The Trinity Oaks Tyler Plant Phase I is still expanding and we are selling our capacity. Phase II will add capacity, and there are other plants in the joint venture pipeline,” Royal added. “At the end of the day, we need more capacity.”

Royal noted that part of the reason for the company’s joint venture with Lummus Technologies’ Green Circle division is the need for an engineering firm to license and build facilities to allow scale to meet demand. “Everybody wants this technology, and our objective is to increase capacity at more facilities to be able to meet demand,” Royal stated.

Let’s face it: Advanced recycling technologies are in their infancy. There are a number of challenges to implementing them in a way that can satisfy demand, which, for now, is outstripping the number of companies that can process waste plastics at a meaningful scale because of size and feedstock supply. There are also regulatory hurdles to overcome when someone wants to put in an advanced recycling plant. Everyone, it seems, wants to solve the problem, but no one is willing to help reduce the regulatory obstacles to speed up the process. While government entities are passing laws to encourage recycling, including advanced recycling, no one is trying to shorten the miles of red tape that companies must confront before an advanced recycling plant can be built.

It was good to hear from Royal at New Hope Energy and get an up-to-date review of what the company is doing. He’s promised to keep PlasticsToday in the loop regarding future plans that, he said, are “coming down the road.”

I’m happy that we made a connection and got a chance to talk about the industry and the challenges New Hope is facing. I suppose there is still “hope” for the future of this industry.

New Hope residents hoping to own a rooster, a peacock or duck will have to reconsider. The New Hope City Council has opted to modify portions of the domestic animal portion of city code, including a limit on fowl-keeping strictly to chickens.

“Only chickens allowed,” City Manager Kirk McDonald told the New Hope City Council at its Sept. 13 meeting.

The changes, approved by the council that night, also removed a process that allowed residents to keep more animals than was spelled out in the code. By removing a “permit to exceed limitations,” residents will not be able to apply for special exceptions for keeping any animal, including cats and dogs.

“It eliminates the permit to exceed limitations for all animals,” McDonald said. “Nobody else is going to be here (at City Hall) to request to have more.”

The maximum of cats and dogs a resident may keep remained unchanged. Currently, no more than three dogs and three cats may be kept, as well as three other domesticated animals like rodents, ferrets, birds or snakes.

Kennel license holders will still be able to exceed maximums, as well as residents who have already obtained a permit to exceed limitations. However, those already keeping more animals than the code allows will have to renew the permit annually. According to a document prepared by city staff, those “grandfathered in” would also be subject to regular welfare inspection by the city’s animal control officer, and could have their permits revoked “if nuisance problems arose.”

The decision came after a resident applied to keep 12 chickens on their property, the document reported. At the time, the council directed staff to recommend more definitive limits on animal keeping, as well as align practices with the city of Crystal. Currently, the two cities share an animal control officer.

The new code modifications adopt elements from the Crystal city code. There are nine new requirements for coop structures, six conditions for preventing nuisance situations, and a requirement that egg sales comply with the Minnesota Department of Agriculture standards for home enterprises.

The alignment with Crystal also precipitated an increase in the maximum number of chickens a household can keep from three to four.

The council was unanimous in its approval. McDonald said besides differing requirements on keeping cats and dogs, the animal codes between the cities of Crystal and New Hope were aligned.

First lady Melania Trump visited a McAllen, Texas shelter for refugee children today, capping off a tumultuous week for the White House in which Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen and President Trump were forced to append their position on separating children from parents who were entering the country at the Southern border.

Mrs. Trump spoke with social workers at Upbring New Hope Children's Center, a non-profit that, according to its website, houses unaccompanied minors ages six through 17 and places them with foster families. Per the Dallas Morning News, the Center is currently holding 60 children. It is not immediately clear how many of the children currently in Upbring New Hope Children's Center arrived there through traditional means.

First lady Melania Trump tours a Texas detention center.

Getty Images

The first lady's spokeperson, Stephanie Grisham, gave a brief statement on the purpose of the visit, which was not previously announced. "She's seen the images. She's heard the recordings," Grisham said. "The images struck her, as a mother, as a human being. She wanted to see everything for herself...She supports family reunification."

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Grisham's comments echoed a similar statement released on Sunday in which the first lady, through her representative, expressed concern over President Trump's policy. "Mrs. Trump hates to see children separated from their families and hopes both sides of the aisle can finally come together to achieve successful immigration reform," Grisham said at the time. "She believes we need to be a country that follows all laws, but also a country that governs with heart."

Yesterday, following days of public outcry, President Trump signed an Executive Order which he said would stop the separation of children from parents that his administration began. The order, however, run afoul of the Flores Settlement, a 1997 court decision that limits the amount of time a child can be detained by immigration authorities. Per Trump's new Executive Orders, families will be able to stay together but they will be able to be held indefinitely.

Correction: An earlier version of this article incorrectly characterized the nature of Upbring New Hope Children's Center. It is a children’s shelter that provides care for unaccompanied refugees ages 6-17, not a migrant detention center.

R. Eric Thomas

R. Eric Thomas is a columnist for ELLE.com, where he skewers politics, pop culture, celebrity shade, and schadenfreude. He is also the author of Here for It: Or, How to Save Your Soul in America, a memoir-in-essays.

The Mays Cancer Center at UT Health San Antonio — South Texas’ only National Cancer Institute-Designated Cancer Center — is putting a decades-old antidepressant drug to new use treating breast cancers that don’t respond to existing therapies.

Research in the Joe R. and Teresa Lozano Long School of Medicine at UT Health San Antonio provided compelling evidence of the drug’s anticancer activity. The discovery led to a clinical trial that benefited 15 breast cancer patients at the Mays Cancer Center.

Imipramine, the antidepressant, was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 1959 for treatment of major depressive disorder. Long prescribed to cancer patients to fight depression, researchers have reported anecdotally that it also appears to have anticancer activity, said Ratna Vadlamudi, PhD, professor of obstetrics and gynecology and co-leader of the Cancer Development and Progression Program at the Mays Cancer Center.

The Vadlamudi laboratory is a training ground for tomorrow’s scientists — postdoctoral fellows, graduate students and younger scholars. Vadlamudi, who has made many research discoveries in cancer, advised his protégés that the National Cancer Institute, part of the National Institutes of Health, prioritizes the repurposing of FDA-approved drugs as cancer treatments. He showed the youngest team member, Arhan Rao, a library of approved drugs. Rao studied the list and made observations. He asked if the laboratory might set its sights on imipramine. Vadlamudi and his team agreed.

The results are exciting. Imipramine inhibits triple-negative breast cancer and estrogen receptor-positive breast cancer in both mouse and human tumors. These two cancers are notoriously difficult to treat in patients. Cancer Letters, a peer-reviewed journal, published the team’s results:

This solid foundation of knowledge set the table for the clinical trial directed by Virginia Kaklamani, MD, leader of the Breast Cancer Program at the Mays Cancer Center and professor of medicine in the Long School of Medicine. The clinical team gave imipramine to women newly diagnosed with breast cancer who awaited surgery.

“We typically have a window of two to three weeks or so between the diagnosis and the surgery, and this is an opportunity for us to give patients a drug and test to see how it does on cancer tissue,” Kaklamani said.

The care team obtains a biopsy as part of the initial diagnosis and another tissue specimen during surgery. “This affords two time points so we can see how the cancer has changed with the imipramine treatment,” Kaklamani said. “We did that in 15 patients, and overall, we were able to show that imipramine can decrease tumor growth.”

This small pilot study, funded by the Mays Cancer Center, is a preliminary experiment to show that imipramine is an active drug in breast cancer, Kaklamani said.

“FDA-approved drugs will be safe, as they are used to treat other diseases,” Vadlamudi said. “If the same drugs work to kill cancer cells, then they can be used in clinics right away.”

This perfectly reflects the National Cancer Institute’s goal to repurpose existing drug therapies for cancer, and it gives new hope to South Texas women — and patients worldwide — diagnosed with these hardest-to-treat breast cancers.

UT Health San Antonio has more than 1,700 ongoing research studies that involve humans, including 450 clinical trials. These clinical trials range from endodontics and respiratory care to diabetes treatments and cancer therapies.

Read more about this research and other discoveries aimed at curing diseases at GroundbreakingResearch.org.

The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio (UT Health San Antonio), a primary driver for San Antonio’s $44.1 billion health care and biosciences sector, is the largest academic research institution in South Texas with an annual research portfolio of $360 million. Driving substantial economic impact with its six professional schools, a diverse workforce of 7,900, an annual operating budget of $1.08 billion and clinical practices that provide 2.6 million patient visits each year, UT Health San Antonio plans to add more than 1,500 higher-wage jobs over the next five years to serve San Antonio, Bexar County and South Texas. To learn about the many ways “We make lives better®,” visit UTHealthSA.org.