Last January, Haldor Topsøe A/S (Lyngby; www.topsoe.com) and FLSmidth A/S (Copenhagen, both Denmark; www.flsmidth.com) began a joint, global effort to commercialize a new catalytic filter-bag technology, which the partners have developed over the past four years. Tradenamed EnviroTex, these filter…
Two new proton-exchange-membrane (PEM) electrolysis systems have debuted, targeting applications that require large volumes of hydrogen. Prior to the launch of Proton OnSite’s (Wallingford, Conn.; www. protononsite.com) M1 and M2 modular H2-generation systems, the largest capacity commercially available from PEM…
A new type of CO2-capture media based on permeable polymer microcapsules has been developed by teams of scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (Livermore, Calif.; www.llnl.gov), Harvard University (Cambridge, Mass.; www.harvard.edu) and the University of Illinois-Urbana-Champaign (www.illinois.edu). The materials have…
Chemists from Rice University (Houston; www.rice.edu) are developing an asphalt-based powder that holds 114% of its weight in CO2. The porous material, known as asphalt-porous carbon (A-PC) captures CO2 as it leaves a natural-gas wellhead at room temperature and at…
Praxair Surface Technologies, a division of Praxair, Inc. (Danbury, Conn.; www.praxair.com), has recently introduced a new line of ceramic aluminum coatings that are said to have the same performance as legacy chromium (VI)-containing coatings. The company’s SermeTel CF and SermaLoy…
Atom transfer radical polymerization (ATRP) is a relatively new process to form carbon-carbon bonds of well-defined polymers. Since its discovery in 1995, ATRP has been performed using transition-metal complexes, such as those of copper. This feature has limited the application…
Construction has been completed on a trailer-mounted pilot plant that will produce substitute natural gas (SNG) from the products of biomass gasification (H2, CO2 and CO). Built by researchers from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT; www.kit.edu) as part of…
In hydraulic fracturing, high-pressure pumps force water bearing sand or ceramic proppants into a manifold, known as a missile, and subsequently into an oil or gas well. Exposure to the highly abrasive, proppant-filled fluids means the pumps require frequent maintenance…
A new low-pressure xylenes-production process combines toluene with methanol to yield a xylenes product stream with the possibility of no benzene byproduct. Known as GT-TolAlk and developed by GTC Technology (Houston; www.gtctech.com), the new process requires no hydrogen addition and…
The Catalyst Div. of BASF (Iselin, N.J.; www.basf.com) has launched PremAir NXT, a next-generation direct ozone reduction (DOR) catalytic coating technology that can help automakers meet new U.S. Tier 3 and California LEV III emissions reduction requirements. When applied to…