On May 31, Climeworks (Hinwill/Zurich, Switzerland; www.climeworks.com) inaugurated its — and the world’s — first commercial plant that captures CO2 directly from air. The Direct Air Capture (DAC) facility, located at the waste-utilization plant of KEZO in Hinwill, Switzerland, will…
A spray-drying technology that applies an electrical charge to feedstock as it exits the atomizing nozzle allows significant reductions in processing temperature and can eliminate downstream processing steps. The charge application can improve control over particle morphology, lengthen shelflife of…
Recycling sachets Later this year, Unilever (London, U.K.; www.unilever.com) plans to open a pilot plant in Indonesia to test the long-term viability of its new technology for recycling plastic sachet (small bags) waste. The process, called CreaSolv, has been developed…
Membrane distillation (MD) — a thermal desalination technique used for recovering pure water from concentrated salt solutions — is hampered by high energy consumption, low single-pass recovery rates and by the need to use expensive heat exchangers to handle the…
Nippon Paper Industries Co. (NPI; Tokyo, Japan; www.nipponpapergroup.com) has installed the world’s largest facility of its kind for the commercial production of cellulose nanofiber (CNF). Located at its Ishinomaki Works in Miyagi Prefecture, the $16-million investment has a production capacity…
The first pre-commercial demonstration has started for a system that can provide steam for industrial process heat using solar energy at prices lower than using natural gas. The technology uses solar thermal collectors to generate hot water, air or steam…
Researchers from the University of Wollongong (Australia; www.uow.edu.au), led by professor Gordon Wallace and Caiyun Wang, built a battery with electrodes and a solid electrolyte out of silk. Previous attempts at making such biodegradable, dissolvable batteries used natural, biocompatible materials…
Many ZnO@TiO2 core-shell nanorod arrays (the notation means ZnO is the core inside the TiO2 shell) with good photocatalytic activity have been designed and synthesized. There has been an increasing interest in the design and synthesis of those arrays to…
Carbon fibers, an increasingly essential component for lightweight materials, are typically made from polyacrylonitrile (PAN) in a three-step process consisting of oxidation/stabilization, carbonization and surface treatment/sizing. 4M Industrial Oxidation, LLC (Knoxville, Tenn.; www.4mio.com) intends to commercialize a technology to produce…
An international group of researchers, coordinated by the Institute of Solar Research of the German Aerospace Center e.V. (DLR; Cologne, Germany; www.dlr.de), is developing a sulfur-based storage system for solar power. Large-scale chemical storage of solar power and its overnight…