Chementator
Covered lagoons treat wastewater and make biogas, too
The world’s first installation of the so-called Cohral technology — deploying a covered lagoon for anaerobic wastewater treatment — was completed last March at Oakey Abattoir Pty Ltd. in the farming region of Darling Downs, in southern Queensland, Australia. The…
May Chementator Briefs
Carbon nanofibers Researchers at North Carolina State University (Raleigh, N.C.; www.ncsu.edu), in conjunction with the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (Oak Ridge, Tenn.; www.ornl.gov) have produced, via a plasma-enhanced vapor deposition process, vertically aligned carbon nanofibers using an acetone and…
New mass spec technique requires no sample preparation
A research group at Stevens Institute of Technology (Hoboken, N.J.; www.stevens.edu) has developed a new mass spectroscopy technique, called helium-plasma-ionization mass spectrometry (HePI-MS), that enables direct sampling of materials without the need for rigorous sample preparation, as is required for…
Tight-oil Tightrope for U.S. Refiners
North American production of crude oil, driven by a rapid increase in output of “tight oil” from U.S. shale deposits like Bakken and Eagle Ford, is surging. In many, but not all areas, petroleum refiners are incorporating an increasing amount…
First in-situ refractive-index sensor for bioreactor monitoring
Process monitoring in biotechnology processes is critical to maximizing product yield and optimizing nutrient consumption. Startup company Stratophase Ltd. (Romsey, U.K.; www.stratophase.com) is now offering the first realtime, in-situ micro-optical sensor for monitoring and control of bioprocesses involving both microbes…
A new class of polymers that utilize CO2
A new plastic made from CO2 and butadiene has been synthesized by Kyoko Nozaki and her research group at the University of Tokyo (Tokyo, Japan; www.chembio.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp/labs/nozaki). Although butadiene is already produced on a large scale for making synthetic rubber, it…
This new water-treatment polymer improves scale control in boilers
A newly developed proprietary terpolymer from GE Water and Process Technologies (Trevose, Pa.; www.gewater.com) has been shown to provide improved scale control on heat-transfer surfaces in low- to intermediate- (up to 900 psig) pressure-steam boilers. Deposit formation on heat-transfer and…
A solid chelating ligand for making heterogeneous catalysts
Shinji Inagaki and colleagues at Toyota Central R&D Labs, Inc. (Nagakute City, Japan; www.tytlabs.com) have synthesized an entirely new immobilization support that can be used to recycle and reuse metalo-organic-complex catalysts, which are widely used for the synthesis of pharmaceuticals…
CO2-utilizing electrocatalytic reaction cell demonstrated
Production of monoethylene glycol (MEG) from waste carbon dioxide has been validated in a demonstration-scale reaction cell developed by Liquid Light Corp. (Monmouth Junction, N.J.; www.llchemical.com). The company says the catalytic-electrochemistry-technology platform used to make MEG can also produce a…
A promising process to recover Li from seawater
Lithium is an element of growing importance for the production of batteries and nuclear fuels. Because Japan relies completely on imports of this material, with the majority coming from South America, the country is looking for alternative sources for this…