A new catalyst that promises to cut the cost of producing biodiesel fuel from vegetable oils and animal fats by 30% has been developed by Victor Lin, a chemistry professor at Iowa State University (Ames, Iowa; edlinks.chemengonline.com/6898-537). The solid catalyst…
Alumina refining by the Bayer process involves the digestion of bauxite ore with caustic soda, which produces “green liquor,†from which alumina is recovered, and a bauxite residue, called red mud, which is stored in large disposal areas. A typical…
A research team from Austria and Sweden have demonstrated that nanowires of a nickel-rhodium alloy exhibit a suprisingly high reactivity to oxygen. Using physical vapor deposition, the researchers have produced quasi one-dimensional rows of Ni atoms on a single-crystal rhodium…
At the end of June, Wuxi NutriRice Co. Ltd. — a joint venture of DSM (Sittard, Netherlands; edlinks.chemengonline.com/6898-550) and Bühler AG (Uzwil, Switzerland; edlinks.chemengonline.com/6898-551) — opened the world’s first facility for producing nutritionally enriched rice. Production at the site will…
Wacker Chemie AG (Munich, Germany; edlinks.chemengonline.com/6898-552) plans to build the first commercial-scale plant for the production of granular polysilicon for the solar industry at its Berghausen, Germany, site. The 650-m.t./yr facility is expected to start up by the end of…
The need to reduce production costs and optimize energy consumption makes proper pump selection more important than ever. Understanding basic pumping principles and the fluid characteristics for a given application is the starting point for selection It has been said…
These helical mixing elements are for several process applications Kenics Sanitary Static Mixers (photo) perform efficient, cost-effective handling of processing applications such as blending, dispersion and heating or cooling. Continuous inline mixing is achieved with no moving parts,…
Max Planck Innovation GmbH (Garching by Munich; edlinks.chemengonline.com/6897-536), the technology transfer agency of the Max Planck Society, has signed a co-exclusive license agreement with Leica Microsystems (Wetzlar) and Carl Zeiss MicroImaging GmbH (Göttingen, all Germany) for the RESOLFT (reversible saturable…
At the end of May, Teijin Twaron B.V. (Arnhem, Netherlands; edlinks.chemengonline.com/6897-543) opened a new pilot-production plant for producing a new generation of Twaron para-aramides pulp using a new jet-spinning process. The company did not disclose process details except to say…
Researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology (GIT; Atlanta; edlinks.chemengonline.com/6896-547) and Xiamen University (China) have produced a new form of platinum: 24-faceted nanocrystals whose catalytic activity per unit area can be as much as four times higher than existing commercial…