BP (London; edlinks.chemengonline.com/7372-548) and ConocoPhillips (Houston, Tex.; edlinks.chemengonline.com/7372-549) have combined resources to start Denali — the Alaska Gas Pipeline. The pipeline will move approximately 4 billion ft 3 /d of natural gas to markets, and is said to be the…
CLC bio (Aarhus, Denmark; edlinks.chemengonline.com/7372-550) and partners from Danish research institutions and crop-enhancing firms have started a project to develop potatoes into a multipurpose crop, which is not only used for animal and human food, but also for energy (biofuel)…
Industrial furnaces, or direct-fired heaters, are only as good as the burners that supply them with thermal energy for heat transfer and endothermic chemical reactions. This article presents equations that permit calculation of such important burner-operating characteristics as flame…
Batch reactor systems are used extensively in the pharmaceutical and fine chemical industries for the manufacture of small-volume, high-value products, in either dedicated or multipurpose production facilities. Stable and reproducible operating conditions are of great importance in order to achieve…
The Seebeck effect — the direct conversion of a temperature difference to electricity — is responsible for the operation of thermocouples. But taking advantage of this phenomenon to make electricity from waste heat in so-called thermoelectric (TE) devices has been…
Researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems (ISE; Freiburg, Germany; edlinks.chemengonline.com/7370-575) have developed a solar-cell prototype that is semi-transparent, color-tunable and (thus far) resistant to weather degradation. A "classical Grätzel cell" according to Andreas Gombert head of Fraunhofer’s…
Tube plugging is probably the most frequently used maintenance and repair technique for the tube side of an exchanger. This article provides information on how to locate the positions of tube failures and discusses why it is important to know…
Daihatsu Motor Co., Ltd. (Osaka, Japan; edlinks.chemengonline.com/7369-532) has designed a fuel cell for powering automobiles, using nickel and cobalt for the electrodes (instead of conventional platinum and carbon), and hydrazine hydrate (N 2H4. H2O) as its fuel (instead of hydrogen).…
Last month, Benefuel, Inc. (Mt. Prospect, Ill.; edlinks.chemengonline.com/7369-533) established an exclusive global agreement with Süd-Chemie India Pvt. Ltd. (SCIL; New Delhi) whereby SCIL will manufacture proprietary solid-acid catalysts for Benefuel’s biodiesel production facilities around the world. The patent-pending catalysts —…
Johnson ElectroMechanical Systems, Inc. (Atlanta, Ga.; edlinks.chemengonline.com/7369-536) in conjunction with professor Heshmat Aglan of Tuskegee University (Tuskegee, Ala.; edlinks.chemengonline.com/7369-537) has received a $75,000 grant from the U.S. Dept. of Energy (DOE; Washington, D.C.) to further develop the firm’s solid-state heat…