In recent years, engineers at ETH Zurich have developed technology to produce liquid fuels from sunlight and air. At the heart of the production process is a solar reactor that is exposed to concentrated sunlight delivered by a parabolic mirror…
Substituting nitrogen atoms for aromatic carbon atoms at specific locations within the molecular skeleton of a possible therapeutic agent can have significant effects on molecular properties critical for biological activity, such as hydrogen bonding, polarity, metabolic stability, target specificity and…
A process to produce an alternative to palm oil for food applications, developed by scientists at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore; www.ntu.edu.sg), will be scaled up for commercial production through a partnership with Eves Energy Pte. Ltd. (Singapore; www.eves-energy.com).…
Tailored separation systems address energy consumption and fouling while supporting sustainability Recently there has been a demand for separation technologies that are better suited to specific applications and a more sustainable world, so providers of filters and membranes have begun…
Plant Watch Petrobras announces biorefining breakthrough at Riograndense refinery November 9, 2023 — Petróleo Brasileiro S.A. (Petrobras; Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; www.petrobras.com.br) has successfully processed 100% soybean oil in a fluid catalytic cracking (FCC) unit at its Riograndense petroleum refinery…
Alliant Energy (Madison, Wis.; www.alliantenergy.com) was recently selected to receive a $30-million grant from the U.S. Dept. of Energy’s Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations (OCED; Washington, D.C.; www.energy.gov/oced) for a proposed 200-MWh energy storage system. Alliant Energy’s new battery system,…
Building off of a process to efficiently manufacture graphene (see Chem. Eng., April 2022, p. 9), a team of researchers from Rice University (Houston, www.rice.edu) have uncovered that the process can be easily altered to also produce a nearly pure…
Last month, Metso Corp. (Espoo, Finland; www.mogroup.com) introduced a hydrogen-variant of its Ferroflame LowNOx burners as part of its NextGen Pelletizing plant product range. It is a first-of-its-kind burner to run on H2 and to operate on the LowNOx combustion…
The efficiency and cost effectiveness of modularity provides advantages for small- and large-scale projects When the right conditions exist, the benefits of modular construction — from laboratory scale to large scale — are plentiful and allow single-source, cost-effective and efficient…
Producing hydrogen via methane pyrolysis – termed ‘turquoise hydrogen’ – has thus far received less attention than ‘blue’ and ‘green’ H2, but it may offer advantages over both While the vast majority of current hydrogen production occurs by steam reforming…