In The News
Testing the limits of cryogenic distillation
CSIRO (Perth, Australia; www.csiro.au) and the University of Western Australia (www.uwa.edu.au) have developed a first-of-its-kind pilot plant for high-pressure cryogenic distillation processes. “Although cryogenic distillation is practiced in industry and there are some models that can be applied to cryogenic…
Extracting lithium from waste brine without ponds
The growing demand for lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) has created incentives to improve processes for extracting lithium from brine. Current Li-extraction processes involve pumping brine from underground into shallow pools for evaporation and concentration. But the traditional method has several significant…
More scalable method for membrane separations
Membranes present a lower-energy alternative to distillation for the separation of hydrocarbons, but these processes are often limited by prohibitively expensive materials or intricate fabrication steps. Now, a team of researchers from Texas A&M University (TAMU; College Station, Tex.; www.tamu.edu)…
Business News for July 2018
Plant Watch Arkema to expand polyamide powder production capacity in France June 6, 2018 — Arkema (Colombes, France; www.arkema.com) plans to expand its global production capacity for specialty polyamide powders marketed under the brand name Orgasol by more than 50%…
The first commercial power-to-liquids plant planned
Nordic Blue Crude A/S (NBC; Porsgrunn, Norway; www.nordicbluecrude.no) intends to build the first power-to-liquids (PtL) plant in the Norwegian industrial park of Heroya, located 140 km southeast of Oslo. Although the date for the startup has not yet been released,…
Highly selective adsorbent tackles complex sulfur species
To meet strict sulfur specifications and reduce emissions, amine scrubbing and caustic treatment are frequently used to remove hydrogen sulfide from gas and liquid streams, but these methods are not effective for handling more complex organo-sulfur compounds, such as thiophenes…
Transformations in Transit: Chemical Logistics Get Smarter
Digitalization, sustainability, security and safety are at the forefront of innovations in the logistics and supply-chain sectors Ensuring that chemical products reach the correct location at the correct time requires intricate networks of complex logistics and scheduling tasks where several…
Biologically inspired denitrification catalyst
The development of denitrification catalysts that can reduce nitrate and nitrite to N2 is critical for sustaining the nitrogen cycle. However, regulating the catalytic selectivity has proven to be a challenge, due to the difficulty of controlling complex multi-electron/proton reactions.…
Simplifying Integration of Modular Construction Projects
Plug-and-produce concepts for automating modular skids may solve integration challenges for modular construction projects Modular construction — both of facilities and process skids — has gained popularity due to its benefits, including speed of delivery and predictability of cost and…
Harnessing the Joule-Thomson effect for treating wastewater with high salinity
A thermal-membrane process system, based on the Joule-Thompson effect (JTE) for treating wastewater with high salinity or with a high-level of inorganic contents has been developed by Thermosift Engineering Pvt. Ltd. (Asaripallam, Tamil Nadu, India; www.thermosift.com). The system operates at…