Verenium Corp. (Cambridge, Mass.; www.verenium.com) and BP p.l.c. (London; www.bp.com) have formed a partnership to accelerate the development and commercialization of Verenium’s technology for producing ethanol from cellulosic feedstocks such as sugarcane bagasse, switchgrass, rice straw and wood chips. In…
Metabolix, Inc. (Cambridge, Mass.; www.metabolix.com) has demonstrated, in recently completed greenhouse trials, that switchgrass plants engineered using the firm’s multi-gene expression technology produced significant amounts polyhydroxybutyrate (a polyhydroxyalkanoate; PHA) bioplastics in leaf tissues. The result is said to be the…
BHR Biofuels, a subsidiary of BHR Group (Cranfield, U.K., www.bhrgroup.co.uk), has installed and demonstrated two process-intensified, full-size Biodiesel Reactor Systems at a chemical plant producing biodiesel from waste and virgin oils. The reactor systems are said to consume some 70%…
Conventional cooling systems rely on the properties of gases to cool, but common coolants are either harmful to people or the environment. A different approach is being investigated by researchers at the Dept. of Electrical Engineering, Penn State University (University…
Evonik Industries AG (Essen; www.evonik.com) and SolarWorld AG (Bonn, both Germany; www.solarworld.de) have opened a new solar silicon plant in Rheinfelden (Baden, Germany). As part of the joint venture (JV) Joint Solar Silicon (JSSI), the two companies are using a…
Vogelbusch GmbH (Vienna, Austria; www.vogelbusch.com) has developed a patent-pending distributor system that it claims makes possible the adaption of simulated moving bed (SMB) chromatography for use in the pharmaceutical industry. Prior to this, SMB use has been limited to the…
Ehrfeld Mikrotechnik BTS GmbH (EMB), a subsidiary of Bayer Technology Services GmbH (BTS; Leverkusen, Germany; www.bayertechnology.com), has signed a production-and-marketing agreement with Xytel Inc. (Spartanburg, S.C.; www.xytelcorp.com) to introduce microreactor technology in pilot plants for the oil and gas, chemical…
Algae constitutes roughly half of the Earth’s photosynthetic activity and undergirds the food chain for approximately 70% of the world’s biomass. With over 100,000 strains ranging from microscopic single-cellular organisms to seaweed species miles in length, algae would seem to…
Plant Watch Emerson wins contract to automate water-treatment-chemicals plant in China August 20, 2008 — Nalco Industrial Services Co. has selected Emerson Process Management to be the main instrument vendor for a new water-treatment-chemicals plant in the Nanjing Chemical &…
A microbial process originally designed to remediate soils contaminated with hydrocarbons has accelerated the recovery of bitumen from oil sands fivefold in bench-scale tests conducted at Savannah River National Laboratory (SRNL, South Carolina; srnl.doe.gov). The heart of the process is…