Last month, the American Chemical Society (ACS) celebrated its 19th annual National Chemistry Week, a community-based program that aims to communicate how chemistry benefits quality of life. The initiative goes hand-in-hand with the American Chemistry Council’s (ACC’s) “essentialâ‚‚” advertising campaign,…
When Estee Lauder begin stirring up recipes for facial creams recipes in her kitchen some 70 years ago — the start of a $6.5-billion cosmetics empire that still bears her name — making high-purity emulsions was…
The need to transfer bulk-solids materials from the outlet of a bin or from a conveyor, to a process, truck, or another bin is ubiquitous throughout the chemical process industries (CPI). Transferring material using equipment designed to mechanically…
The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Arlington, Va.) has awarded $5.7 million to a two-company consortium to develop an inexpensive and energy-efficient process for making titanium metal powder. Such powders can be used to make strong, lightweight objects, such…
Chemists at Boston College (Chestnut Hill, Mass.; edlinks.chemengonline.com/6517-546) have discovered a silylation catalyst that attaches a silicon atom to an alcohol group not only with high selectivity, but also in such a way that only one enantiomer is formed. Silyation…
On September 5, Linde AG (Wiesbaden, Germany; edlinks.chemengonline.com/6517-547) and the BOC Group plc. (Windlesham, U.K.; edlinks.chemengonline.com/6517-548) merged to become one of the leading industrial gases and engineering companies. The new company is called The Linde Group (Munich, Germany), but the…
Last month, BOC Edwards (Wilmington, Mass.; edlinks.chemengonline.com/6517-549) completed installations of its new ERIX wastewaster treatment system at the College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering, of the University of Albany's Albany NanoTech complex (N.Y.). The installation is a development step towards…
Energie Baden-Württemberg AG (EnBW; Karlsruhe) and Siemens Power Generation (Erlangen, both Germany; edlinks.chemengonline.com/6517-550) are joining forces to build a fuel-cell hybrid power plant with 70% efficiency (fuel to electricity) and a megawatt-scale power output. The 70% efficiency of this hybrid…
Scientists from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (edlinks.chemengonline.com/6517-551) have developed a catalyst that uses hydrogen to efficiently destroy harmful perchlorate in contaminated groundwater. The catalyst is composed of palladium and rhenium supported on activated carbon. The rhenium removes an…
Researchers from 34 institutions from around the world have completed the first DNA sequence for a tree, the black cottonwood or Populus trichocarpa (poplar). This poplar's rapid growth and relatively compact genome size (480 million nucleotide units, or 1/40th as…