Teijin Limited (Tokyo; www.teijin.co.jp/english) has announced that the Utsunomiya Factory (Tochigi Prefecture) of Teijin DuPont Films Ltd., which had suspended polyethylene terephthalate (PET) film production following the earthquake in northeastern Japan on March 11, resumed partial operations on April 30.…
Akzo Nobel N.V. (AkzoNobel; Amsterdam, the Netherlands; www.akzonobel.com) has announced its intention to seek agreement from the Board and shareholders of ICI Pakistan Ltd. (ICI Pakistan) to separate the organization's paints and chemicals businesses. Under the terms of the proposal,…
An Australian team including CSIRO (Melbourne; www.csiro.au) and the Uni- versity of Newcastle (www.newcastle.edu.au) has developed an alternative pathway for producing ultra-low-ash coal that, the team believes, can be used to fuel diesel engines, thus providing the opportunity for diesel…
Scientists from the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST; Tsukuba, Japan; www.aist.go.jp), in collaboration with Tokyo University of Science and Panchakot Mahavidyalaya University, have demonstrated that a nickel-complex-type organic nanotube (Ni-ONT), developed by AIST, can catalyze oxidation…
Last month, PJI Contract Pte Ltd. (Singapore; www.pjicon.com.sg) opened a production facility for the manufacture of titanium dioxide solution — a self-cleaning, nanocoating material developed at Singapore Institute of Manufacturing Technology (SIMTech; www.simtech.a-star.edu.sg), a research institute of the Agency for…
A solar cell made of carbon nanotube (CNT) fiber has been demonstrated by researchers from Fudan University (Shanghai; www.fudan.edu.cn). University professor Huisheng Peng says, “For the fibers we use, the carbon nanotubes exhibit a high degree of alignment with much…
After a nine-month field demonstration at BTX, Inc.’s Sleepy well site in Indiana, Pa., Altela Inc.’s (Albuquerque, N.M.; www.altelainc.com) AltelaRain 4000 water desalination system has been shown to turn Marcellus Shale wastewater into distilled water. The demonstration, funded by the…
Wastewater reuse Aqua-Chem Inc. (Knoxville, Tenn.; www.aqua-chem.com) has developed a filtration-based process for purifying wastewater from large-scale carpet manufacturing. The process effectively removes dyes and other additives from wastewater to reduce concentrations from around 800 ppm to less than…
A freeze-drying system recently commercialized by ULVAC, Inc. (Chigasaki, Japan; www.ulvac.co.jp) produces spherical particles by spraying a solution into a vacuum chamber. The approach has numerous advantages over conventional freeze-drying, and can be used for generating dry powders in the…
By immobilizing carbon nanotubes (CNTs) within polymer membrane pores, scientists at the New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT; Newark, N.J.; www.njit.edu) were able to significantly improve the efficiency of desalination via a membrane distillation process. Somenath Mitra and colleagues at…