An international team, including staff from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (Kaist; Daejeon, South Korea; www.kaist.ac.kr), led by Kaist’s professor Jeung Ku Kang, has developed a technology to analyze the gas adsorption behavior of molecules of each…
Solar desalination Researchers at Rice University (Houston, Tex.; www.rice.edu) working on nanophotonics-enabled solar membrane distillation (NESMD) have found that concentrating sunlight on small areas of the desalination membrane leads to a non-linear improvement in performance in vapor pressure, which forces…
A modular, fuel-cell-like assembly featuring specially developed microbial communities is capable of producing pure hydrogen from a wide range of organic wastes. Developed by startup company Electro-Active Technologies (Oak Ridge, Tenn.; https://electroactive.tech), the microbial electrolysis system is now in the…
Conventional plastics are difficult to recycle because end-of-life processing generally is either energy-intensive or alters the physical properties of the materials. A team of researchers from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley, Calif.; www.lbl.gov) and the University of California at…
Chemists from the research group of Stefania Grecea at the University of Amsterdam’s (UvA; the Netherlands; www.uva.nl) Research Priority Sustainable Chemistry have devised a way to enhance the practical performance of metal-organic frameworks (MOFs). By using leaves from the black…
Scientists from the University of Science and Technology of China (Hefei; https://en.ustc.edu.cn), led by professor Shu-Hong Yu, have developed a thermal insulator that mimics the structure of individual polar-bear hairs, and have scaled toward a material made of many hairs.…
Hypersaline industrial wastewater brines are difficult to treat. Current approaches for removing salt from such brines — such as evaporative distillation and reverse-osmosis (RO) — are problematic because evaporation is highly energy-intensive and RO cannot handle salt levels present in…
Plant Watch Oxea to build new carboxylic acids plant in Germany July 6, 2019 —Oxea (Monheim am Rhein, Germany; www.oxea-chemicals.com) is building a new world-scale production plant for carboxylic acids in Oberhausen, Germany. When brought onstream by the end of…
The latest valves are designed to last in challenging chemical applications, increasing uptime and safety As operational efficiency and safety continue to be top priorities in the chemical process industries (CPI), processors are demanding increased reliability from their equipment, and…
Plastic caps with corrosion inhibitors protect pipe in transit The CorroLogic CorrPlug caps (photo) protect pipe ends, pipe threads and other tubular objects from corrosion, mechanical damage and intrusion (by foreign objects) during storage and shipping. These pipe caps are…