Two Australian companies — Australian Vanadium Ltd. (AVL; www.australianvanadium.com.au) and TNG Ltd. (both Perth; www.tngltd.com.au) — are now able to produce commercial-grade vanadium electrolyte for use in vanadium redox-flow batteries (VRFBs). Those batteries are increasingly gaining favor, primarily for grid-scale…
Researchers from the group of professor Ikuya Yamada at Osaka Prefecture University (Osaka, Japan; www.osakafu-u.ac.jp), in collaboration with the University of Tokyo, Japan Synchrotron Radiation Research Institute (Hyogo; www.spring8.or.jp) and Fuji Die Co. (Tokyo; www.fujidie.co.jp), have synthesized for the first…
The release of silver from industrial wastewater has caused serious environmental problems. Many methods have been developed to remove silver ions from industrial wastewater, including chemical precipitation, ion exchange, electrolysis, replacement, membrane and reverse osmosis. Several adsorbents have been used…
A new commercial manufacturing process for carbon nanotubes (CNTs) produces tubes in the range of 1–10 mm in length (5–12-nm dia.), two orders of magnitude longer than currently available CNTs, which typically have lengths from 5–20µm. “Despite attractive mechanical and…
Demand for carbon fiber (CF), which can be used to make strong, lightweight composite materials for improving vehicle fuel economy and wind-power generation, has been growing. However, widespread use of these advanced composites has been limited by the high production…
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL; Richland, Wash.; www.pnnl.gov) has developed a hydrothermal liquification (HTL) process that converts sewage sludge directly into “biocrude oil,” which can then be refined by conventional methods into liquid fuels, such as gasoline, diesel and jet…
The glass industry’s needs are extremely diverse, and manufacturers demand stability and precision in their furnace operations. Air Products (Lehigh Valley, Pa.; www.airproducts.com/glass) has released an advanced burner, the patent-pending Cleanfire HR e, which is said to be the first…
Last month, the first compact plant to produce synthetic fuels from solar energy and CO2 extracted from air was commissioned in Finland, as part of the Soletair project, which is coordinated by the Technical Research Center of Finland (VTT: Espoo;…
The Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT; Germany; www.kit.edu) is cooperating with research institutions and industry partners to develop a novel process chain for the synthesis of methanol, either without the use of fossil resources or by reusing CO2 from undesired…
A group of organizations, lead by the Southwest Research Institute (SWRI; San Antonio, Tex.; www.swri.org) has begun a project to design a power-generation pilot plant featuring a flameless, pressurized oxyfuel combustion technology that allows the capture of 100% of the…