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Organic flow-battery electrolyte powered by a supramolecular “handshake”
Flow batteries have been widely deployed in large-scale energy-storage applications in recent years, but the low energy density and high cost of the incumbent vanadium electrolyte limit the long-term return on investment of such systems. A new organic redox flow-battery…
Thermal management system for data centers boosts cooling efficiency and shrinks footprint
Fast-growing power densities within the server racks at new data centers often generate enough heat to quickly overwhelm legacy air- and liquid-cooling methods, and managing the thermal load is becoming a constraint for the data-center infrastructure that supports AI. A…
Drive to Zero Process Safety: Mapping Cultural Risk Factors
Proactive culture evaluation closes the gap between root causes and cultural factors to promote sustainable safety leadership while also preventing recurring accidents and chronic incidents Incident investigations commonly show that human factors have led to process safety issues. Yet, despite…
Focus On: Solids-Handling Equipment
This vacuum system empties containers and minimizes dust The Pneumati-Con ® dilute phase vacuum conveying system (photo) is designed to facilitate dust-free manual dumping and the conveying of materials from small bags or sacks. Additionally, it includes the ability to…
Scale-Up Considerations for New Technologies
Scaling up new technologies is a strategic challenge requiring foresight and disciplined execution. Success demands designing pilot plants with scalability in mind. Applying a set of principles outlined here can reduce risk, improve investor confidence and enhance the likelihood of…
Can We Skip Pilot and Demonstration Studies?
When scaling up from laboratory experiments to full-scale production, there are a strong set of reasons for constructing intermediate pilot-scale plants, but there are also some scale-up situations where it may pay off to skip the pilot studies Pilot-plant studies…
Editor Commentary: Inflection point for interoperability
The idea of vendor-neutral industrial control systems built on open standards that allow for interoperability among hardware and software components has been swirling within the industrial automation industry for the past 12 years, but progress toward this objective to date…
New technology unlocks longer lifespan for all-solid-state batteries
A new manufacturing technique is helping to overcome some of the major hurdles in developing more reliable and durable all-solid-state batteries. Combining a controlled sintering step with precise passivation, researchers from Paul Scherrer Institute PSI (Villigen, Switzerland; www.psi.ch) focused on…
Novel saltwater fermentation process yields seaweed-based bioplastics
Polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHA) are a class of biodegradable plastic materials that can be produced via a range of biological processes. Due to their versatile production pathways and physical properties, they have become an emerging alternative to fossil-based plastics. A new production…
CSB issues final investigation report on July 2023 ethylene oxide release at Dow site in Louisiana
Today, the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board (CSB; Washington, D.C.; www.csb.gov) released its final investigation report into the July 2023 explosions, fires, and toxic ethylene oxide (EtO) release at the Dow Chemical Company’s (Dow) Louisiana Operations Glycol II plant…