Regulation of water content in polymeric membranes is important in several applications, including proton-exchange fuel cell membranes. Normally, this is achieved either by external regulation or by operating the cells at higher temperatures. Now a team from CSIRO (Melbourne, Australia;…
Biomass to sugar Plans are underway to build a commercial-scale sugar-production facility that uses a novel process for converting corn stover into high-purity glucose. The 95%-pure glucose syrup produced there will be used as a raw material in the production…
Shell Thiogro (www.shell.com/sulphur/thiogro) and Uhde Fertilizer Technologies (UFT; www. uhde-fertilizer-technology.com), part of thyssenkrupp Industrial Solutions AG (Essen, Germany), have established a partnership to integrate UFT’s fluidized-bed (FB) granulation technology with Shell’s Urea-ES (enhanced sulfur) technology, which was introduced in May…
A design-of-experiments (DoE) approach has resulted in better-performing fluids for metal grinding, cutting and machining applications. These fluids serve to lubricate cutting surfaces, remove heat, prevent corrosion and carry away fine particulates that can distort machined surfaces. In recent years,…
The Clark-Reliance Corp. (Strongsville, Ohio; www.clark-reliance.com) has been awarded a U.S. Patent for its Eye-Hye SmartLevel system for remote indication of water level for industrial boilers. The patent recognizes the uniqueness of the system’s self-diagnostic technology, which intelligently monitors the…
A novel food-packaging material that is free from chemical additives and that can slow down fungal growth — doubling the shelf-life of perishable foods — has been developed by researchers from the National University of Singapore (www.nus.edu.sg). The researchers used…
Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT; Cambridge, Mass.; www.mit.edu) have demonstrated a two-stage process to convert synthesis gas (syngas) into lipids that can be used in biodiesel production. Eventually, such a process could be used to convert waste…
A Korean team, headed by professor Sang Yup Lee of the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (Daejeon, South Korea; www.kaist.ac.kr), has obtained various forms of PLGA [poly(lactate-co-glycolate)] from natural sources, allowing plastics to be made in an environmentally…
The field of additive manufacturing (AM) — often referred to as 3-D printing — has seen explosive growth in recent years (Chem. Eng., February 2015, pp. 20–23; www.chemengonline.com/3-d-printing-accelerates-creating-cpi-opportunities). In AM, no tools or molds are required to shape the desired…
The research group of Ayumi Minoda at the University of Tsukuba (Japan, plmet.biol.tsukuba.ac.jp) has discovered that the cellular surface layer of the sulfothermophilic red algae, Galdieria sulphuraria, can efficiently adsorb gold and palladium ions, even in highly acidic conditions. G.…