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COVID-19 Shutdowns Slash Demand for Refined Products

Demand for refined products has dropped sharply, challenging petroleum refineries with compressed margins, but a deal was struck on global production cuts The large-scale shutdown of economic activity related to the global pandemic response has caused demand for refined petroleum…

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MOFs and nanochannels enable lithium extraction from brines

Lithium is a key raw material for batteries that power electric vehicles, portable electronics and more, but traditional methods for obtaining it are plagued by poor lithium recovery (a large portion of Li is lost in the recovery process), slow…

Wearable technologies: Wear it Well

Wearable technologies help chemical processors improve productivity and safety of workers Wearable technologies — cameras, tablets and other devices loaded with applications (apps) and software that can be attached to the body or personal protective equipment (PPE) — are catching…

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Progress towards lithium-sulfur batteries

An international team, led by Mahdokht Shaibani from Monash University (Melbourne, Australia; www.monash.edu), has developed an ultra-high capacity lithium-sulfur battery with better performance and lower environmental impact than current Li-ion batteries. The team includes people from Monash University, University of…

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Batteryless machine-health monitor enabled by low-power computer chips

Everactive (Charlottesville, Va.; www.everactive.com) has just launched its Machine Health Monitor (MHM) product for batteryless vibration and temperature sensing of process machinery (photo). The MHM harvests waste energy from small temperature differentials (10°F or greater) and ambient light (100 lux…

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Oxidative precipitation recovers nickel and cobalt from ore

An alternative method for processing mixed nickel-cobalt hydroxide precipitate to separate the nickel from cobalt and manganese has been proposed by a team from the Bandung Institute of Technology (Bandung, Indonesia; www.itb.ac.id), the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (Bandung) and the…

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A desalination process that pumps ions instead of water

Researchers from Indonesia’s Bogor Agricultural University (Bogor, Indonesia; www.ipb.ac.id), the University of Bath (U.K.; www.bath.ac.uk), and the University of Johannesburg (Johannesburg, South Africa; www.uj.ac.za), led by Budi Riza Putra, have developed a low-cost, low-energy and low-maintenance, solar-powered desalination system that…

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This gold catalyst improves CO2 reduction

Researchers from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST; Daejeon; www.kaist.ac.kr) have developed a three-dimensional (3D) hierarchically porous nanostructured catalyst that is said to have a CO2-to-CO conversion rate up to 3.96 times higher than that of conventional…

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Semiconducting material combines handedness and polarity

A semiconducting material synthesized by researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI; Troy, N.Y.; www.rpi.edu) could enable new ways of manipulating electronic materials remotely using light. The material, explains RPI professor of materials science and engineering Jian Shi, derives its unique…

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Wood-supported catalyst safely keeps fruit fresh

Ethylene is a multifunctional phytohormone that regulates growth, ripening and other functions in plants. For example, bananas stored next to apples will ripen quickly due to the ethylene released from the apples, which in turn are triggered to release more…