Conventional plastics are difficult to recycle because end-of-life processing generally is either energy-intensive or alters the physical properties of the materials. A team of researchers from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley, Calif.; www.lbl.gov) and the University of California at…
Chemists from the research group of Stefania Grecea at the University of Amsterdam’s (UvA; the Netherlands; www.uva.nl) Research Priority Sustainable Chemistry have devised a way to enhance the practical performance of metal-organic frameworks (MOFs). By using leaves from the black…
Scientists from the University of Science and Technology of China (Hefei; https://en.ustc.edu.cn), led by professor Shu-Hong Yu, have developed a thermal insulator that mimics the structure of individual polar-bear hairs, and have scaled toward a material made of many hairs.…
Hypersaline industrial wastewater brines are difficult to treat. Current approaches for removing salt from such brines — such as evaporative distillation and reverse-osmosis (RO) — are problematic because evaporation is highly energy-intensive and RO cannot handle salt levels present in…
PDH catalyst Last month, Clariant's Catalyst business (Munich, Germany; www.clariant.com) launched its latest propane dehydrogenation (PDH) catalyst, Catofin 311, which is said to deliver greater selectivity and a longer lifetime than its predecessors, resulting in increased overall profitability for propylene…
Lignin — a component making up 25–35% of woody biomass — is underutilized as a byproduct of biofuels production and paper-making processes. Because of its abundance, low-cost and sustainability, lignin is being investigated as a raw material for making higher-value…
In a paper published last month in Nature Energy, scientists from the Institute of Chemical Research of Catalonie (ICIQ; Tarragona, Spain; www.iciq.org) describe how, for the first time, a magnet has been used to directly enhance the production of hydrogen…
Last month, a consortium of 11 European partners, including ArcelorMittal, Axens, IFP Energies nouvelles (IFPEN) and Total, launched a project to demonstrate an innovative process called DMX for capturing CO2 from industrial activities. It is part of a more comprehensive…
Low-frequency noise (≤500 Hz) from various sources, such as construction machinery and aircrafts, is a form of noise pollution that transmits over long distances and disturbs the surrounding area. It is also known to trigger several negative physiological reactions, such…
Twofold C–H activation and cross-coupling of stoichiometric amounts of organic molecules, R1–H and R2–H, to form an R1–R2 product that is free of homocoupling products (R1–R1 or R2–R2) is a goal to simplify organic synthesis of certain compounds. Up to…