Algae show promise for removing nutrients like phosphorus and nitrogen from wastewater due to their natural absorption abilities. However, the widespread use of algae-based wastewater treatment is limited by challenges related to system footprint, mass transfer and maintaining optimal conditions…
A new thermolysis technology developed by Composite Recycling (Ecublens, Switzerland; www.composite-recycling.ch) breaks down fiber-reinforced polymers (FRPs) into their fundamental constituents, enabling reuse as valuable feedstock for the creation of new composite materials. “Past efforts to recycle composites have allowed waste…
Breaking down polyethylene terephthalate (PET) into its constituent monomers under mild conditions is a key goal of plastics recycling. Knowledge of how many naturally occurring enzymes are capable of breaking down PET, and which would be most effective in industrial…
Despite the abundance of nitrogen and hydrogen, industrial ammonia synthesis remains an energy-intensive process. Electrochemical methods have been suggested as potentially lower-energy alternatives to traditional ammonia synthesis, but these newer technologies often struggle with achieving key performance metrics. By integrating…
Capital intensity is among the current constraints on industrial-scale fermentation, because the hardware for steam sterilization of bioreactors is complex and expensive. After recently emerging from stealth status, the startup company Biosphere (Oakland, Calif.; www.biosphere.io) has launched a new reactor…
Many separation processes depend on chemical or thermal principles, such as solvent extraction or distillation, but in some cases, mechanical methods can provide effective separations with lower cost and energy requirements. Eirex (Vaughan, Ont., Canada; www.eirex.ca) has developed a proprietary…
An ExxonMobil Corp. (Spring, Tex.; www.exxonmobil.com) adhesive-resin finishing facility in Baton Rouge, La. has become the first commercial process-manufacturing facility to be controlled by an open, standards-based process automation system. This is a departure from the closed, proprietary systems currently…
Thin gold films offer a broad range of benefits for electronics due to their high electrical conductivity and transparency. Current manufacturing methods are unable to achieve gold films thinner than 10 nm, and are also limited in the area and…
The wide range of performance properties of polyurethane foams makes them essential in many consumer goods. Thus, there is much effort going into creating a more environmentally friendly production process for polyurethane’s main building blocks, polyols and isocyanates. While much…
In December 2024, the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL; Richland, Wash.; www.pnnl.gov) announced a three-year collaborative project with vehicle-tire manufacturer Bridgestone (Tokyo, Japan; www.bridgestone.com) to scale up a thermocatalytic process for converting renewably derived ethanol to n-butene. Conventionally, n-butene is…