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Processing & Handling

A new anionic surface-sizing agent

Basoplast 450 P is a new and highly cost-efficient polymeric surface-sizing agent (PSA) for the packaging sector. The product is suited for linerboard grades and complements the manufacturer’s range of anionic PSA in the graphical paper market. By replacing cationic…

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This pipe-cladding process applies corrosion-resistant coatings faster

The surface engineering company MesoCoat, Inc. (Euclid, Ohio; www.mesocoat.com) recently started up a facility for manufacturing clad pipe for the oil-and-gas industry that uses the company’s proprietary fusion-cladding technology to apply corrosion-resistant alloys to carbon-steel pipes. Because the cladding can…

Slash silo mixing times with this open mixing screw

A company in Hamburg, Germany had been using a 20-m3 mixing silo with internal pipe auger for 20 years. By replacing the pipe auger (photo, left) with an open mixing screw with special segments (photo, right), the company gained a…

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Physical chemistry principles point to a better way to clean up oil spills

One of the current methods for dealing with oil spills is through the use of dispersants. These dispersants, however, break oil into small globules that sink into the water, spreading the oil into a wider area, and they have toxic…

Control valves operate four times faster with this volume booster

  With the newly developed, high-precision 4090 pneumatic volume booster it is possible to amplify the air strength of the set point signal from the positioner to the actuator such that these control valves (depending on the nominal valve size)…

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Continuous production of ‘Bio-cokes’

Kinki University (www.kindai.ac.jp) and Naniwa Roki Co. (both Osaka, Japan; www.naniwaroki.co.jp) have developed a continuous process for producing a next-generation solid fuel, called Bio-cokes. The process is being used at a new production facility located at Kinki University Research Institute…

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New boiler fuels from oil, coal and biomass wastes

Composite liquid and slurry boiler fuels have been produced from mixtures of various waste materials, such as biomass, coal- and crude-oil-processing residues, wood and other combustible substances, in a collaboration between researchers at the University of Rhode Island (Kingston, R.I.)…

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A step towards artificial photosynthesis

A photocatalyst that reduces CO2 into carbon monoxide is being commercialized by Tokyo Chemical Industry Co. (Tokyo, Japan; www.tcichemicals.com/en/jp/index.html). Developed by Osamu Ishitani and his research group at Tokyo Institute of Technology (TiTech; Japan; www.chemistry.titech.ac.jp/~ishitani/index-jp.htm), the catalyst is a step…

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Nanoscale particles help produce steam

A research group at Rice University (Houston; www.rice.edu) has developed a method for vaporizing water into steam using sunlight-illuminated nanoparticles, with only a small fraction of the energy heating the fluid. Sub-wavelength metal or carbon particles are intense absorbers of…

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This reactor will produce methanol directly from methane

Under an ARPA contract Gas Technology Institute (GTI, Des Plaines, Ill.; www.gastechnology.org) is developing a process to convert natural gas directly into methanol and hydrogen. The process is much simpler and more efficient than the conventional high-temperature and capital-intensive steam-reforming…