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Latest News: Technologies

A promising process to recover Li from seawater

Lithium is an element of growing importance for the production of batteries and nuclear fuels. Because Japan relies completely on imports of this material, with the majority coming from South America, the country is looking for alternative sources for this…

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A new tantalum line of heat exchangers for corrosive service

Last month, Alfa Laval AB (Lund, Sweden; www.alfalaval.com) introduced a new range of tantalum heat exchangers that offer the corrosion resistance of a solid-tantalum heat exchanger, but at a much lower investment cost. The heat exchangers are made of stainless…

Imitating nature leads to a separator for oil droplets

Separation of micron-sized oil droplets from water is difficult by conventional methods. A Chinese team has developed an oleophilic array of conical needle structures that can continuously collect micron-sized oil droplets from an oil-water mixture with high efficiency and high…

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April Chementator Briefs

Ammonia synthesis Last month, Haldor Topsøe A/S (Lyngby, Denmark; www.topsoe.com) introduced a new ammonia-synthesis catalyst. Tradenamed KM 111, the new catalyst is a magnetite-based catalyst developed for optimal performance in the lower beds of NH3 converters. The KM 111 catalyst…

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An inorganic paper for preserving information and other applications

A new kind of highly flexible and non-flammable inorganic paper that can be used for the permanent and safe storage of information has been developed by a team led by professor Ying-Jie Zhu, from the Shanghai Institute of Ceramics, Chinese…

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An organic waste-to-biogas system to be scaled up in first installation

Construction will soon begin at a site in Korea on an anaerobic digester technology that converts organic waste and biomass to methane at high conversion rates, while also producing a fertilizer stream. Technology developer Bioconversions Solutions LLC (Exton, Pa.; www.bioconversionssolutions.com)…

Global Air-Pollution Regulations: Variation is the Norm

The chemical process industries (CPI) are, by their very nature, global in scope. While chemical process operators share many common aspects (in terms of the use of chemical engineering unit operations), the location of their operation brings about different requirements…

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Organic corrosion inhibitors perform well against oxidizing biocides

After extensive pilot- and field-testing, U.S. Water Services (St. Michael, Minn.; www.uswaterservices.com) plans to roll out new “green” corrosion inhibitor products, which have been tested not only for effectiveness against corrosion in cooling-water applications, but also for the inhibitors’ performance…

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Bio-isobutene fermentation process to be piloted

Construction is underway in France on a pilot plant for what is believed to be the first fermentation process capable of directly producing the light olefin isobutene. Global Bioenergies (Evry, France; www.global-bioenergies.com) expects to begin operations of a 500-L fermentation…

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March Chementator Briefs

  Renewable 5-HMF Last month, commercial-scale production of high-purity 5-hydroxymethylfurfural (5-HMF) started at the Biochem-1 facility operated by AVA Biochem (Muttenz, Switzerland; www.ava-biochem.com). In the first phase, the facility will produce 20 metric tons (m.t.) per year of 5-HMF —…