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 —…
Petroteq Energy Inc. (Sherman Oaks, Calif.; www.petroteq.energy) has achieved continuous operation at its oil-sands processing site in Utah, which is said to be the first commercial plant in the U.S. to extract and upgrade crude oil from U.S. oil sands.…
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…
Sewage and wastewater often contain pollutants and environmental hormones (endocrine disruptors) that can have a negative effect on the environment and on human health. Catalysts currently used to destroy such pollutants involve high costs. And up to now, research has…
Natural wax coating Researchers from Aalto University (Finland; www.aalto.fi) have developed a new way of making garments water-resistant, without using toxic chemicals. The treatment is non-toxic, and does not impair breathability. The coating uses carnauba wax from Brazilian palm-tree leaves.…
Researchers at the City University of New York Energy Institute (ccny.cuny.edu) have developed a low-cost battery based on manganese dioxide and zinc that reaches voltages of greater than 2 V, a first-time achievement that could allow batteries with these low-cost…
On September 19, Focus-On (Dordrecht, the Netherlands; www.focus-on-process.com) — a new, 50:50 joint-venture (JV) of Samson AG (Frankfurt am Main; www.samson.de) and Krohne GmbH & Co. KG (Duisburg, both Germany; www.krohne.com) — introduced its new “intelligent process node,” a device…