The wide range of performance properties of polyurethane foams makes them essential in many consumer goods. Thus, there is much effort going into creating a more environmentally friendly production process for polyurethane’s main building blocks, polyols and isocyanates. While much…
In December 2024, the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL; Richland, Wash.; www.pnnl.gov) announced a three-year collaborative project with vehicle-tire manufacturer Bridgestone (Tokyo, Japan; www.bridgestone.com) to scale up a thermocatalytic process for converting renewably derived ethanol to n-butene. Conventionally, n-butene is…
Developing sustainable pathways to ethylene — among the world’s most widely used chemicals — is a key element in decarbonizing the process industries. A new electrolysis technology developed by CERT Systems (Toronto, Ont., Canada; www.co2cert.com) can produce ethylene from CO2…
Desalination of seawater with reverse osmosis (RO) membranes is a key technology for addressing water scarcity issues around the globe, but seawater desalination is energy-intensive and the brine discharge can create coastal environmental problems. The company Flocean AS (Oslo, Norway;…
Nearly all ammonia is produced using methane via the Haber-Bosch process, which requires high-temperature and high-pressure operation. A new portable prototype device developed by researchers from Stanford University (Stanford, Calif.; www.stanford.edu) and King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals (Dhahran,…
Water scarcity is a growing global concern that is driving increasing efforts to conserve, re-use and treat water. Desalination of seawater is a known technology to combat water shortages, but it is an energy-intensive process. Solar-powered evaporation can be a…
Permanent magnets — materials that create their own persistent magnetic field — are frequently used in most types of electronics, turbines, engines and motors. Currently, nearly all powerful permanent magnets require rare-earth elements (REEs), such as neodymium or samarium. A…
Electrochemically converting carbon dioxide into useful chemicals or fuels is a promising CO2-utilization strategy, but scaling up the process is a challenge. One reason is that the gas-diffusion electrodes (GDEs) used to facilitate contact between gaseous CO2, solid catalyst and…
Dry reforming of methane (DRM), in which carbon dioxide and methane are combined to form synthesis gas (H2 and CO), is an attractive route to making syngas because it does not require consumption of water and does not produce CO2…
Meeting climate-change goals requires steep reductions in greenhouse-gas emissions from existing power plants and hard-to-abate industry operations. However, the energy required to release captured CO2 from sorbent material is a challenge for the economic viability of these efforts. Also, retrofitting…