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…
A new technology designed for improving the environmental footprint associated with processing liquid waste streams containing suspended or dissolved solids has been developed by Sedron Technologies (Sedro-Wooley, Wash.; www. sedron.com) and tradenamed Varcor. The technology separates, dries and sterilizes solid…
Scientists at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL; Switzerland; www.epfl.ch) have synthesized the first ever metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) membrane with the thickness of just one unit cell. The ultrathin film yields record-high performance for the separation of hydrogen from nitrogen.…
The Vilsmeier reagent (VR), [(CH3)2 NCHCl]Cl, is necessary for producing a large range of pharmaceuticals, but it is unstable in air and is made from the toxic precursor phosgene (COCl2). A new flow-reactor system has been developed by Akihiko Tsuda,…
Coolbrook Oy (Helsinki, Finland; www.coolbrook.com) has successfully completed the first phase of large-scale pilot testing (photo) for its RotoDynamic Technology at the Brightlands Chemelot Campus in Geleen, the Netherlands. During 2023, Coolbrook has been running a test program to demonstrate…
Bio-acrylonitrile Site selection is underway for a glycerol-to-acrylonitrile demonstration-scale plant that will enable the production of plant-based acrylonitrile (ACN). Trillium (Knoxville, Tenn.; www.trilliumchemicals.com) is partnering with Zeton (Oakville, Ont.; www.zeton.com) to design and build the plant, known as Project Falcon.…
Bioresorbable polymers — those that degrade naturally over time and can be absorbed by the body — are essential for delivering a number of advanced biomedical technologies to patients, including long-acting injectable or implanted products, regenerative scaffolds, degradable medical devices,…
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…