In a project of the New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO; Kawasaki, Japan; www.nedo.go.jp), a collaboration of six industrial, government and academic partners has developed a catalyst for reducing oxides of nitrogen (NOx) from automobile exhaust. Because the…
Using a workhorse technology known as the gas-subcooled process (GSP), most natural gas plants recover between 85 and 90% of ethane in raw natural gas streams. Honeywell UOP (Des Plaines, Ill.; www.uop.com) has developed a modular retrofit unit designed to…
Active surfactants are those that are responsive to an external stimulus, such as temperature, light, electric or magnetic fields or chemical agents. Scientists from the Institute for Basic Science (Daejeon, South Korea; www.ibs.re.kr) have developed surfactants based on functionalized nanoparticle…
It has been a challenge to find materials that can reliably detect volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and toxic gases in air at the parts-per-billion (ppb) level, or that can be used for therapeutic diagnosis from breath analysis. That’s because two…
Waste to chemicals A consortium of companies, including Air Liquide (Paris, France; www.airliquide.com), AkzoNobel Specialty Chemicals (Amsterdam, the Netherlands; www.akzonobel.com), Enerkem Inc. (Montreal, Canada; www.enerkem.com) and the Port of Rotterdam, has signed a project development agreement covering initial investments in…
Lithium-ion batteries based on intercalation compound electrodes exhibit poor performance at temperatures below 0°C. Insufficient ionic conductivity and freezing of the electrolyte are generally seen as the main reasons for the poor performance of rechargeable batteries at low temperatures. Although…
Last month, Genomatica (San Diego, Calif.; www.genomatica.com) and Aquafil (Trento, Italy; www.aquafil.com) announced a partnership to commercialize a Genomatica process for making caprolactam derived from renewable feedstocks, rather than from petroleum. The cyclic amide caprolactam is a key intermediate for…
In what is said to be the largest municipal wastewater application using peracetic acid (PAA) disinfectant to date, the Metro Wastewater Reclamation District in Denver, Colo. recently began disinfecting wastewater effluent with a PAA formulation from Enviro Tech Chemical Services,…
Researchers led by professor Hideo Honoso at Tokyo Institute of Technology (Yokohama City, Japan; www.titech.ac.jp) have discovered a new catalyst that enhances the efficacy of NH3 synthesis by two orders of magnitude over that of a conventional Ru catalyst at…
Acrylonitrile (ACN) — a precursor in nearly all carbon fibers — is typically produced from propylene and ammonia, but a new method uses biomass-derived second-generation sugars. The process was developed by Southern Research (Durham, N.C.; www.southernresearch.org) and seeks to provide…