Chemical Engineering
The Ten Most Common Laboratory Ventilation Mistakes
A laboratory ventilation system that does not work effectively may not keep personnel safe and can produce significant adverse impacts on operations Laboratory personnel treat their ventilation systems as a given. They expect them to be designed right, to always…
Convert CO2 to methanol at room temperature
A new electrocatalytic technology (diagram) is said to be the first to produce methanol from CO2 at ambient temperature and pressure in a commercially viable reactor design. Oxylus Energy (New Haven, Conn.; www.oxylusenergy.com) recently unveiled a 5-cm2 electrolysis cell to…
Flow reactor safely performs SuFEx click chemistry
Click chemistry — the subject of the 2022 Nobel Prize in Chemistry — is a powerful and efficient method for rapidly connecting chemical fragments. One highly versatile type of click chemistry involves the so-called SuFEx [sulfur(VI) fluoride exchange] reaction, which…
New membranes for dehydrating organic solvents
Researchers at Asahi Kasei Corp. (Düsseldorf, Germany and Tokyo, Japan; www.asahi-kasei.com) are developing a membrane-based system that dehydrates organic solvents without heat or pressure. The system is targeting pharmaceutical-manufacturing applications, where organic solvents are commonly used in performing reactions, as…
Pilot plant planned for CO2 capture project using carbonate fuel cells
ExxonMobil affiliate Esso Nederland B.V. (Rotterdam, the Netherlands; www.esso.nl) is planning to build a pilot plant at its Rotterdam manufacturing complex to generate performance and operability data for a modular carbon-capture and storage (CCS) technology based on carbonate fuel cells…
This process makes freshwater from brine while capturing CO2
A new electrochemical technology for direct-air capture (DAC) of atmospheric CO2 can also produce freshwater from brackish water or brine waste from desalination or wastewater treatment facilities (diagram). The technology, developed by Capture6 (Berkeley, Calif.; www.capture6.org), splits the salt content…
Reducing CO2 emissions from pig iron production
Researchers of Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT; Germany; www.kit.edu) and the SMS group GmbH (Düsseldorf, Germany; www.sms-group.com) have developed a new process to reduce CO2 emissions from worldwide steel production by several hundred million tons per year. It is based…
Recycle any type of magnet from end-of-life products
A new pilot plant is demonstrating a proprietary technology for recycling magnet materials from end-of-life (EOL) products, such as electric motors, automobile parts and hard-disk drives. Developed by Cyclic Materials Inc. (Toronto, Ont., Canada; www.cyclicmaterials.earth), the Mag-Xtract process is said…
Chevron Lummus Global and Hongrun Petrochemical commission world’s largest all-hydroprocessing white oil unit
Chevron Lummus Global LLC (CLG) announced the successful commissioning of the world's largest white oil hydroprocessing unit for Hongrun Petrochemical (Weifang) Co., Ltd. in Weifang, Shandong Province, China. The new plant, which utilizes CLG's ISODEWAXING and ISOFINISHING technologies, consists of…
Evonik expands production of precipitated silica at Charleston site
Evonik Industries AG (Essen, Germany) has invested in a plant expansion for precipitated silica at its site in Charleston, South Carolina. The new line is satisfying the high demand in particular from the tire industry in North America and makes…