Plant Watch BASF to build a new fermentation plant in Ludwigshafen October 12, 2023 — BASF SE (Ludwigshafen, Germany; www.basf.com) is investing in a new fermentation plant for biological crop-protection products, such as fungicides, insecticides and seed treatments, at its…
Alliant Energy (Madison, Wis.; www.alliantenergy.com) was recently selected to receive a $30-million grant from the U.S. Dept. of Energy’s Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations (OCED; Washington, D.C.; www.energy.gov/oced) for a proposed 200-MWh energy storage system. Alliant Energy’s new battery system,…
Bioresorbable polymers — those that degrade naturally over time and can be absorbed by the body — are essential for delivering a number of advanced biomedical technologies to patients, including long-acting injectable or implanted products, regenerative scaffolds, degradable medical devices,…
Milling is a common technique for controlling particle-size distribution (PSD) in solid products through size reduction and surface modification. Broadly, mills can be categorized as wet or dry mills, and these two categories are each further subdivided by how comminution…
The Vilsmeier reagent (VR), [(CH3)2 NCHCl]Cl, is necessary for producing a large range of pharmaceuticals, but it is unstable in air and is made from the toxic precursor phosgene (COCl2). A new flow-reactor system has been developed by Akihiko Tsuda,…
Coolbrook Oy (Helsinki, Finland; www.coolbrook.com) has successfully completed the first phase of large-scale pilot testing (photo) for its RotoDynamic Technology at the Brightlands Chemelot Campus in Geleen, the Netherlands. During 2023, Coolbrook has been running a test program to demonstrate…
Bio-acrylonitrile Site selection is underway for a glycerol-to-acrylonitrile demonstration-scale plant that will enable the production of plant-based acrylonitrile (ACN). Trillium (Knoxville, Tenn.; www.trilliumchemicals.com) is partnering with Zeton (Oakville, Ont.; www.zeton.com) to design and build the plant, known as Project Falcon.…
As I get older, time seems to get shorter. Although many experience this feeling, the duration of time is not changing, only our perception of it. However, in the five decades I have been involved in science, the timescale at…
A new technology designed for improving the environmental footprint associated with processing liquid waste streams containing suspended or dissolved solids has been developed by Sedron Technologies (Sedro-Wooley, Wash.; www. sedron.com) and tradenamed Varcor. The technology separates, dries and sterilizes solid…
Scientists at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL; Switzerland; www.epfl.ch) have synthesized the first ever metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) membrane with the thickness of just one unit cell. The ultrathin film yields record-high performance for the separation of hydrogen from nitrogen.…