In June, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA; Washington, D.C.; www.epa.gov) announced the winners of the 2011 Presidential Green Chemistry Challenge Awards. Winners of the Challenge, which promotes R&D of less hazardous alternatives to existing technologies that reduce or eliminate…
The Fine Chemicals Div. of Takasago International Corp. (Takasago; Tokyo, Japan; www.takasago.com) has commercialized a new, highly efficient asymmetric hydrogenation catalyst for producing chiral alcohols — key chemicals for the production of pharmaceuticals, fragrances and agrochemicals. The ruthenium-complex catalyst is…
The use of solar energy to split water into hydrogen and oxygen is an appealing idea, given that sunlight is abundant in many parts of the world, but one of the challenges to its development is to find a suitable…
Last month, BASF SE (Ludwigshafen, Germany; www.basf.com) launched a new crosslinking acrylate monomer, hydroxpropl carbamate acrylate (HPCA), which is said to shorten the processing time for the manufacture of carbamate-based polymers. HPCA enables crosslinkable carbamate units to be incorporated into…
Forward osmosis (FO) has been recognized as a valuable technology for many applications including wastewater reclamation, seawater desalination, and energy production, due to the low energy input required. The osmotic pressure gradient across a semipermeable FO membrane causes water to…
Practically all of the coal-fired power plants in the U.S. collect ash from the bottoms of their boilers using a wet system — the ash falls into hoppers that are partially filled with water, and once or twice per shift…
A new anode material with nanostructured interfaces between barium oxide and nickel prevents deactivation by coking in solid-oxide fuel cells (SOFCs) using carbon-containing fuels. The material offers a path to low-cost, low-emission SOFCs that can convert gasified carbon fuels to…
A newly introduced cryogenic grinding mill from Air Products and Chemicals Inc. (Allentown, Pa.; www.airproducts.com/ultrafine) can generate consistent yields of particles between 45 and 250 µm, and in some applications can achieve particle sizes of 10 µm. The ultrafine grinding…
Graphene from dry ice Researchers at Northern Illinois University (NIU; DeKalb, Ill.; www.niu.edu) discovered a new method for producing graphene that involves burning pure magnesium metal in dry ice. The method, which is capable of producing large quantities of…
The properties of gold nanoparticles could be combined with those of polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) to provide a sustainable and practical solution for water treatment, according to a team from the Jawaharlal Nehru Center for Advanced Scientific Research (Bangalore, India; www.jncasr.ac.in). The…