Cellulosic biomass pretreated with ammonia undergoes structural changes that make it more susceptible to enzymatic attack, scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory (Los Alamos, N.M.; www.lanl.gov) and collaborators at the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center (Madison, Wisc.; www.glbrc.org) have found.…
This company’s Type 57IL Isolator Lug butterfly valve features a unique design in which the 316 stainless-steel lugs are inserted into the valve body during the injection-molding process. Doing so permanently combines the lugs and valve body into one unit.…
Anew process to make BTX (benzene, toluene and xylenes) from light cycle oil (LCO), an oversupplied product of petroleum refineries that can supplement the dwindling supply of BTX precursors, is being developed by JX Nippon Oil & Energy (JX Energy;…
The SFT-10 Liquid Carbon Dioxide pump features advanced thermoelectric technology that allows the generation of high pressure without the need for an external cooling bath. The SFT-10 can pressurize carbon dioxide up to 10,000 psi at flowrates from 0.01 to…
Phosgenation scaleup At the end of July, Bayer MaterialScience AG (BMS; Leverkusen, Germany; www.bayerbms.com) successfully tested its new gas-phase phosgenation technology at a new plant being commissioned for making toluene diisocyanate (TDI) — a raw material for making polyurethane —…
This article presents equations that allow the user to calculate liquid volume as a function of liquid depth, in both vertically and horizontally oriented tanks with dished heads. The equations accommodate all tank heads that can be described by two…
Metabolix Inc. (Cambridge, Mass.; www.metabolix.com) has successfully demonstrated and completed research and development for scaleup on a fermentation process that produces gamma -butyrolactone (GBL) from genetically engineered bacteria. The process is built upon the company’s technology for engineering metabolic pathways…
Since the isolation of graphene by the “Scotch tape” method, many researchers have tried to synthesize solution-dispersible graphene. The challenge has been to develop a high-yield method that can exfoliate graphite efficiently into solution-dispersible graphene sheets without collateral damage to…
Today only a few percent of Canada’s oil sands resource is accessible by traditional surface mining, so the rest has to be recovered in situ, mostly by steam-assisted gravity drainage (SAGD). In this process, steam is injected into a horizontal…
A new yeast strain that could one day substitute for petroleum as a source of surfactants for detergents, soaps and cosmetics has been identified by researchers at the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture’s National Center for Agricultural Utilization Research (Peoria, Ill.;…