New block copolymer Nexar is the tradename of a block copolymer product recently commercialized by Kraton Performance Polymers (Houston; www.kraton.com) that has unique water-transport properties. Building on its earlier work in anionic polymerization of styrene-butadiene block copolymers, the company…
To date, the difficult-to-treat contaminants and their related biological inhibition in petroleum refinery wastewater have defied efforts to bring predictive and mathematical process control to biological wastewater-treatment systems. Now, for the first time, engineers at Refinery Water Engineering & Associates…
The Fine Chemicals div. of Takasago International Corp. (Tokyo, Japan; www.takasago.com) has commercialized Deneb: Oxo-Tethered Ruthenium (II) Complex, which shows higher catalytic activities compared to conventional RuCl (arene)(N-sulfonylated diamine) catalyst systems. The higher activity enables a reduction in catalyst loading…
Base-catalyzed decomposition (BCD) is a commercially used process developed in the early 1990s by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA; Washington, D.C.) for the destruction of persistent organic pollutants (POPs). It has been used as an alternative to incineration for…
Researchers at the University of Minnesota (Minneapolis/St. Paul; www.umn.edu) have produced thin-film zeolite membranes that are only 200 nm thick, compared to 5–10 µm for conventional zeolite membranes. The new membranes could cut energy and capital costs by 90% for…
Last month, KBR (Houston; www.kbr.com) was awarded a license and process-design-package contract for a new olefins-production unit using the Advanced Catalytic Olefins (ACO) technology. The contract represents the first license of the ACO process, which catalytically cracks naphtha and other…
The two basic energy-storage devices — dielectric and double-layer capacitors — entail serious limitations. Dielectric capacitors have low capacitance, on the order of 0.1 to 1.0 µF/cm2, while the double-layer capacitor has a high capacitance, on the order of 0.5…
For the first time, an organic compound has been synthesized from water, carbon dioxide and sunlight — without any other external energy or reagents. The achievement, which was demonstrated by researchers at Toyota Central Research and Development Laboratories, Inc. (Toyota…
A facility that produces high-purity lithium carbonate for use in the growing market for electrolytes in electric-vehicle batteries has begun commercial operations in Imperial Valley, Calif. The 500-ton/yr plant, operated by Simbol Materials (Pleasanton, Calif.; www.simbolmaterials.com), is the only producer…
Impending standards requiring that cellulosic ethanol be used in gasoline blending have focused attention on building a capacity for bioethanol from non-food sources. In a development that may begin to meet that need, a plant employing a unique method for…