Strength with stress Shear forces usually break bonds in polymer materials, but a research team at Duke University (Durham, N.C.; www.duke.edu) has demonstrated for the first time synthetic polymers capable of forming new bonds in the presence of shear…
A process from Dow Water & Process Solutions (DW&PS; Edina, Minn.; www.dowwaterandprocess.com) uses a unique adsorbent resin to improve the taste of orange juice. Amberlite FPX66 is a macroreticular, non-functionalized adsorbent resin with a pore structure designed to capture a…
Lactose has been widely used as a pharmaceutical excipient, where the size and morphology of the particles of lactose significantly affect the functionality of the resultant drug product. Lactose particles produced by various methods exhibit various morphologies, such as spherical…
A continuous fermentation process for making biologically derived butanol from a variety of sugar feedstocks is operating at what developers call “lab-pilot” scale, producing 2.5 liters per day. Engineering studies conducted by the research team forecast that it could be…
Researchers from EMPA, the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology (St. Gallen, Switzerland; www.empa.ch) have developed organic phosphorous-containing compounds, called phosphoramidates, that show promise as non-toxic alternatives to conventional halogenated flame retardants, such as tri(chloropropyl)phosphate (TCPP) or polybrominated…
The petroleum refining sector in India plays a vital role in the country’s industrial development and provides a major source to meet India’s energy requirements. Today, the refining sector satisfies about 30% of the total energy demand of India […
Researchers from the U.S. Dept. of Energys Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI; Emeryville, Calif.; www.jbei.org) have reported the first demonstration of a one-pot, wash-free process for the ionic-liquid pretreatment and saccharification of switchgrass — a leading potential biofuel feedstock. By combining…
AMT International Inc. (Plano, Texas; www.amtintl.com) and LG Chem, Ltd. (Seoul, Korea; www.lgchem.com) have successfully converted an existing sulfolane liquid-liquid extraction (LLE) unit at LG Chem’s Yeosu plant using a new extractive-distillation (ED) process for aromatics recovery. This technology was…
Cement manufacturing is a major source of greenhouse gas emissions due to two factors: carbon dioxide is released when calcium carbonate calcines to lime (CaO) in the cement manufacturing process; and cement kilns are operated at temperatures of 1,500°C, which…
The selective, one-step biocatalytic hydroxylation of benzene to phenol — at ambient pressure and temperature — has been demonstrated by professors Yoshihito Watanabe and Osamu Shoji at Nagoya University (Nagoya, Japan; bioinorg.chem.nagoya-u.ac.jp). The achievement was made using a wild-type of…