Palladium is widely used in membrane applications because of its extreme selectivity for hydrogen. However, conventional palladium membranes can be damaged at the high temperatures required for many processes that generate hydrogen for various subsequent uses, including the manufacture of…
By replacing traditional silicon or graphite anode materials with specially crystallized niobium, manufacturers can overcome some of the safety and power limitations of traditional lithium-ion batteries (LIBs). Echion Technologies Ltd. (Cambridge, U.K.; www.echiontech.com) has developed a proprietary mixed niobium-oxide active…
Siloxanes — synthetic chains of alternating silicon and oxygen atoms — are widely used in personal care products, soaps, pharmaceutical formulations and other products, but are notoriously difficult to manage in production- and waste-fluid streams. Current approaches, including flaring and…
The widely used plastic polyethylene terephthalate (PET) can be depolymerized by reacting it with sodium hydroxide (NaOH) under strong mechanical impact from metal spheres in a ball mill. This type of mechanochemical route to recycling could alleviate some of the…
The production of commercially important hydrocarbons from synthesis gas (syngas; mixtures of H2 and CO) using the Fischer-Tropsch (F-T) process is a key strategy for making fuels and chemicals from a range of non-petroleum feedstocks. But F-T processes are relatively…
Among the major challenges facing efforts to chemically recycle common waste plastics is that many methods require a pure stream of a single type of polymer to be effective. Now, researchers at Northwestern University (NU; Evanston, Ill.; www.northwestern.edu), led by…
A new electron-curing system has demonstrated a high-speed, solvent-free production process for powerful battery electrodes at industrial scale. The production process, operated by Kodak Co. (Rochester, N.Y.; www.kodak.com) using the RaiCure™ platform developed by Ateios Systems Inc. (Newberry, Ind.; www.ateios.com),…
Carbon-fiber reinforced plastics (CFRPs) are used in a broad range of products, including automotive parts, construction materials and many others. Economically recycling these materials has proven challenging due to their multi-material makeup. Typically, they are chopped into pellets or strips…
Processes to reuse plastics from end-of-life vehicles are complicated by solid contaminants — including pre-embedded metal and rubber components of different sizes and reinforcing glass fiber. Currently, recycling solids-containing waste-plastic parts is accomplished by physical sorting processes. Honda (Tokyo, Japan;…
Electrically conductive plastics, also known as conjugated polymers, bring many cutting-edge benefits for flexible sensors, medical devices, energy-storage systems and more. They are currently produced at relatively small volumes and come with extremely high prices. A novel technology discovered at…