A solar cell made of carbon nanotube (CNT) fiber has been demonstrated by researchers from Fudan University (Shanghai; www.fudan.edu.cn). University professor Huisheng Peng says, “For the fibers we use, the carbon nanotubes exhibit a high degree of alignment with much…
After a nine-month field demonstration at BTX, Inc.’s Sleepy well site in Indiana, Pa., Altela Inc.’s (Albuquerque, N.M.; www.altelainc.com) AltelaRain 4000 water desalination system has been shown to turn Marcellus Shale wastewater into distilled water. The demonstration, funded by the…
Wastewater reuse Aqua-Chem Inc. (Knoxville, Tenn.; www.aqua-chem.com) has developed a filtration-based process for purifying wastewater from large-scale carpet manufacturing. The process effectively removes dyes and other additives from wastewater to reduce concentrations from around 800 ppm to less than…
A freeze-drying system recently commercialized by ULVAC, Inc. (Chigasaki, Japan; www.ulvac.co.jp) produces spherical particles by spraying a solution into a vacuum chamber. The approach has numerous advantages over conventional freeze-drying, and can be used for generating dry powders in the…
By immobilizing carbon nanotubes (CNTs) within polymer membrane pores, scientists at the New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT; Newark, N.J.; www.njit.edu) were able to significantly improve the efficiency of desalination via a membrane distillation process. Somenath Mitra and colleagues at…
Engineers at Algaeventure Systems (Marysville, Ohio; www.algaevs.com) have developed a system for separating liquids from solids and semisolids at very low energies. Originally targeted at harvesting and dewatering microalgae where the technology could remove a major cost barrier, the separation…
Electricity generation of 240 kW has been demonstrated in a Brayton-cycle system that uses supercritical carbon dioxide as the working fluid. Developed by researchers at Sandia National Laboratory (Albuquerque, N.M.; www.sandia.gov) and built by Barber Nichols Inc. (Arvada, Colo.; www.barber-nichols.com),…
Last month, at the AIChE Spring Meeting in Chicago, Henry Kister, director of Fractionation Technology at Fluor Corp. (Aliso Viejo, Calif.; www.fluor.com) presented a patent pending process (U.S. Patent Application WO/2011/016797) that promises to cut energy demand and capital costs…
A new emulsification process, known as Smooth, has been developed by Velocys, Inc. (Columbus, Ohio; www.velocys.com) — a member of the Oxford Catalyst Group Plc. (Abingdon, U.K.) — and is now ready for testing at the commercial scale. Smooth technology…
Last month, Brain AG (Zwingenberg; www.brain-biotech.de) and Dechema e.V. (Frankfurt am Main, both Germany; www.dechema.de) began a collaboration in the biotechnological production of perillic acid — a patented natural monoterpene owned by Brain, with promising applications as a bioactive compound…