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Chemical Engineering

Printing sensors onto stickers

Advanced sensors are crucial to any predictive maintenance strategy, and often these sensors must be quickly installed into difficult-to-reach spaces. A novel nanomaterial technology enables predictive sensors that can be “printed” onto flexible stickers. These stickers can be easily attached…

February Chementator Briefs

Ammonia catalyst Clariant Catalyst (Munich, Germany; www.clariant.com) and Casale SA (Lugano, Switzerland; www.casale.ch) have developed a new ammonia synthesis catalyst for sustainable CO2 reduction. Based on Clariant’s AmoMax 10 — a wüstite-based alternative to traditional magnetite-based catalysts — the AmoMax-Casale…

Metal-oxide nanocrystals have applications in lubrication and electronics displays

Pixelligent Technologies Inc. (Baltimore, Md.; www.pixelligent.com) has developed a process for making metal-oxide nanocrystaline materials that have found uses as additives in a variety of industrial lubricants, mixed- and augmented-reality (AR/MR) glasses, and various display technologies. The company’s PixClearProcess results…

Nanoscale uniformity of desalination membranes

Reverse-osmosis (RO) desalination membranes use a polyamide selective layer formed on a microporous support to separate water molecules from salts. Past efforts to characterize the polyamide membrane structure have been limited by the internal variability of the selective layer. Now,…

A microreactor for continuous formation of Grignard reagents

Today, synthetic routes to about 10% of the top 50 active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) include one or more Grignard reactions, which are used to form C–C bonds. Normally, the reaction is performed batch-wise in continuous stirred-tank reactors (CSTRs), with Grignard…

A major project targets sustainable urea production

A consortium, led by the Netherlands Organization for Applied Scientific Research (TNO; The Hague; www.tno.nl), has received an exceptional grant of €21 million from the European Commission under the Horizon 2020 Framework Program to investigate and develop the potential of…

Bacteria for wastewater treatment

Researchers from the National University of Singapore (www.nus.edu.sg), led by associate professor He Jianzhong, have found a new strain of bacterium called Thauera sp. strain SND5, which is capable of simultaneous nitrification and denitrification and phosphate removal from wastewater. The…

Magnetic field cures adhesives faster with less energy

Conventional adhesives, such as epoxy, are designed to cure using moisture, heat and light. Curing is necessary to cross-link and bond the glue with the two secured surfaces as the glue crystallizes and hardens. Now, scientists from Nanyang Technological University…

Technology Profile: Butyl Acrylate from Acrylic Acid and Butanol

This column is based on “Butyl Acrylate Production from Acrylic Acid and Butanol – Cost Analysis,” a report published by Intratec. It can be found at: www.intratec.us/analysis/butyl-acrylate-production-cost. Butyl acrylate, the butyl ester of acrylic acid, is among the most industrially…

Hydrogen-fuel business OneH2 receives investment from Sumitomo

Sumitomo Corporation of Americas (SCOA; New York, N.Y.), the largest subsidiary of Sumitomo Corp., announced its investment in OneH2, a hydrogen fuel company headquartered in Longview, North Carolina. SCOA's investment will help the company deploy full turnkey hydrogen solutions, creating…