Researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley, Calif.; www.lbl.gov) recently reported a process for converting various blends of cellulosic biomass and municipal solid waste (MSW) into aliphatic methyl ketones. The team used bio-derived ionic liquids to first break down the…
A team of researchers at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI; Worcester, Mass.; www.wpi.edu) are investigating hydrothermal liquefaction (HTL) to simultaneously treat a variety of municipal waste streams and create biofuels. “HTL is an emerging technology for the conversion of various types…
Hydrogen is transported in steel tanks and pipelines. However, H2 causes embrittlement of steels by accumulating at microstructures called dislocations and at the boundaries between the individual crystals of which the steel is composed. The accumulation of hydrogen weakens the…
At the ARC Industry Forum in February, Honeywell Process Solutions (HPS; Houston; www.honeywellprocess.com) released the Experion PKS IT Highly Integrated Virtual Environment (HIVE), a new technology that centralizes up to 80% of IT infrastructure used in project engineering. The PKS…
Energy-storage researchers have been in search of safer electrolytes for lithium-ion batteries, because of persistent concerns over possible overheating and fires resulting from dendrite formation in the anode. Solid polymer electrolytes have been explored to address these issues, but achieving…
Vacuum-microwave drying for pharmaceuticals is much faster than other techniques, such as freeze drying or air drying, but the difficulty in achieving homogenous microwave-energy distribution under vacuum conditions has made it difficult to scale up for commercial manufacturing. “What tends…
Production of bio-based chemicals has important environmental, cost and functional benefits, but historical approaches have lacked robustness to the commercial process environment and have proven costly to develop. A platform technology developed by DMC Biotechnologies (Boulder, Colo.; www.dmcbio.com) was designed…
A large renewable hydrogen production facility, called the Murchison House Station, near the coastal town of Kalbarri, has been unveiled for Western Australia, with plans for up to 5 GW of a combined solar and wind project. The project has…
Hydrogen derived from water and renewable electricity, rather than from natural gas, could offer abundant energy without carbon dioxide emissions if water-splitting processes could be scaled up effectively. But the best catalyst for the reaction — platinum — is scarce…
Membrane bioreactors (MBRs) are widely used in wastewater treatment plants because they intensify the biotreatment process, reduce the number of processing stages, retain the biocatalyst and help remove the product from the suspended solids. In order to take advantage of…