Latest News: Technologies
Chlorine dioxide single-stage NOx scrubbing technology lowers costs
A new process for removing oxides of nitrogen (NOx) from industrial foul-air and cool combustion exhaust uses ClO2 in a unique way to remove over 99% of both NO and NO2 with a single scrubbing stage. The reaction vessel is…
Distillation: Avoid Problems During Tower Startup
A variety of performance problems can arise in distillation towers during startup. Many are caused by equipment, hardware or process conditions. Hardware issues may be related to instrumentation, tower internals or ancillaries. Instrumentation malfunctions are also common during startup and…
A new process for making screens
After eight years of R&D work, Inflotek B.V. (Beringe, The Netherlands; www.) is now commercializing a range of metal screens made with a proprietary, waterjet-cutting technology. Compared to conventional waterjet-cutting methods, Inflotek’s process can reliably make hundreds of perforations per…
Winning copper from low-grade ore
India holds large reserves of low-grade sulfide copper ore containing 0.3 wt.% copper, which cannot be processed through conventional routes since the cut-off grade for treatment in concentrators is about 0.45 wt.%. India is in short supply of copper and…
Convert wastewater and CO2 into chemicals with this technology
Electrochemical and chemical-precipitation technology from New Sky Energy (Boulder, Colo.; www.newskyenergy.com) allows the conversion of salty wastewater and CO2 from fluegas into valuable process chemicals, such as soda ash, calcium carbonate, sulfuric acid, bleach and other chemicals. New Sky’s customizable…
Base-catalyzed nucleophyllic additions with a modified zeolite
A new solid-state basic catalyst for forming carbon-carbon bonds has been developed by Masaru Ogura, an associate professor, and his research group at the Institute of Industrial Science, University of Tokyo (www.u-tokyo.ac.jp). The catalyst has been shown to accelerate the…
Scaleup for a new delignification process
This month, Borregaard Industries Ltd. (Sarpsborg, Norway; www.borregaard.com) will start up an integrated, pilot-demonstration plant to further develop a new pretreatment process for converting biomass into lignin and fermentable sugars. Located at the company’s R&D Center in Sarpsborg, the pilot…
A more sensitive sensor for ions in solution
A research team from the Institute for Photonics and Advanced Sensing, and the School of Chemistry and Physics, the University of Adelaide, South Australia (www.adelaide.edu.au) has combined suspended-core microstructured optical fibers (MOFs) with photoinduced electron transfer (PET) to demonstrate a…
Iron-based catalyst shows promise for alkene hydrosilylations
A catalyst in which iron atoms are complexed with the ligand pyridine diimine (PDI) has shown promise as a replacement for high-cost platinum-based catalysts for industrial olefin-hydrosilylation reactions. Developed by the research group of Paul Chirik at Princeton University (www.…
May Chementator briefs
Double-effect coating Researchers at the Leibniz-Instutut für Neue Materialien GmbH (INM; Saarbrücken, Germany; www.inm-gmbh.de) have developed a nanocomposite coating that simultaneously protects against corrosion while having lubrication properties similar to grease and oil. The new material is suitable for coating…