With the goal of decreasing the climate impact of residential air conditioning (AC), Kraton Corp. (Houston; www.kraton.com) has developed the NexarCool technology in collaboration with Texas A&M University (College Station; www.tamu.edu), India Institute of Technology Bombay (www.iitb.ac.in) and Indian companies…
Efficient upcycling of post-consumer plastics, such as polyethylene (PE), is a key sustainability objective. New research by a team at Argonne National Laboratory (Argonne, Ill.; www.anl.gov) and Ames Laboratory (Ames, Iowa; www.ameslab.gov) has resulted in a novel catalyst material that…
Effectively separating carbon dioxide from combustion exhaust or directly from air is essential for realizing net reductions in greenhouse-gas emissions, but existing technologies for CO2 capture (such as CO2-scrubbing with amines), involve parasitic energy losses, which make carbon-capture economics unfavorable.…
Chemistry professor Oliver Trapp and his colleagues at the Ludwig Maximilians-Universität München (LUM; Germany; www.en.uni-muenchen.de) have developed a new workflow for the production of formaldehyde, which is based on an algorithm constructed with the aid of machine learning (ML), optimization…
Direct route to PG Dow Inc. (Midland, Mich.; www.dow.com) and Evonik Industries AG (Essen, Germany; www.evonik.com) have entered into an exclusive technology partnership to develop a new process to make propylene glycol (PG). The key to the so-called Hyprosyn process…
By the end of fiscal 2019, commissioning and continuous operation will begin on a new methanation plant that will produce 8 Nm3/h of methane from CO2 and H2. The test facility, located at the Koshijihara Plant of Inpex’s Nagaoka Field…
Engineered cementitious composites (ECCs) are concrete-like materials with exceptional ductility (up to 500 times) and flexural strengths (2–3 times) greater than conventional concrete. The flexibility and strength of ECCs could benefit transportation infrastructure (for example, the ductility of ECCs could…
Currently the U.S. has only one domestic source of lithium, a vital element in lithium-ion batteries and other products, but this could be changed through processes being developed by two California companies. Furthest along is a project of EnergySource Minerals…
Rio Tinto (London, U.K.; www.riotinto.com) will shortly start up a pilot plant to produce battery-grade lithium carbonate from 90 years’ accumulated plant waste at its U.S. Borax operation in Boron, Calif. The waste is clay from the production of borates,…
A research team from Pohang University of Science and Technology (Pohang, South Korea; www.postech.ac.kr), led by professor Gyoo Yeol Jung, and Seoul National University (Seoul, South Korea; www.useoul.edu), led by professor Sang Woo Seo, has developed a new microorganism —…