In synthesizing a new molecule that mimics the nickel-iron (NiFe) hydrogenase enzyme, a team of researchers from University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (www.illinois.edu) may have uncovered a promising alternative to the platinum-based catalysts typically used in the electrolysis of water to…
Membrane filtration plants are often used in the food and dairy industry to separate or concentrate substances without thermal stress. Until now, cleaning-in-place (CIP) operations for this equipment was energy- and water-intensive, requiring three or four individual cleaning steps with…
The gas subcooled process (GSP) is a method for low-temperature separation of natural-gas liquids (ethane, propane) from natural gas. Depending on the current market prices of ethane and propane, gas processors extract ethane from the natural gas or reject it…
Solvents are commonly used for performing photochemical reactions. Many of these solvents are toxic, and require additional downstream processing to purify the product and treat waste. Now, by combining light with mechanical energy in ball mills, researchers at Ruhr University…
Chemical recycling of waste polyolefins is difficult to achieve economically partly because of the stability of carbon-carbon bonds in the plastics. In a new approach, researchers at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL; Richland, Wash.; www.pnnl.gov) and the Technical University of…
Current electrolyzers for producing hydrogen use purified water as feedstock, but in the future, this could exacerbate freshwater shortages in some areas. Seawater is highly abundant, but the ions it contains undergo electrode side reactions, and cause corrosion in proton-exchange…
A new flow-battery design is based on quinones — a plentiful material historically derived from coal tar and used in dyestuff manufacturing — rather than traditional battery electrolytes. “Our feedstocks use no critical materials like lithium, cobalt or nickel, and…
The Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (UC3M; Spain; www.uc3m.es) has patented a new system for capturing hyperspectral images — those capable of collecting information across a broad frequency range of the electromagnetic spectrum (near-infrared, mid-infrared and terahertz). The system can…
The demand for vanillin vastly outstrips the natural resources of this flavoring agent. A chemical process is thus used to produce the required large quantities of vanillin from petroleum, which is far less expensive than obtaining the substance from fermented…
Chemists at Hokkaido University (Sapporo, Hokkaido, Japan; www.global.hokudai.ac.jp) and the Institute for Chemical Reaction Design and Discovery have developed what is said to be the first high-performance catalyst specifically designed and optimized for solid-state, mechanochemical synthesis. The new approach was…