Chemical Engineering
Moisture Measurement in Solid Materials
Determining moisture levels in solid materials is important for product quality, handling properties and other considerations. Provided here is an overview of direct and indirect methods for measuring moisture in solids Water is ubiquitous and is unusually reactive because of…
A breakthrough in artificial intelligence-enabled materials discovery
A groundbreaking artificial intelligence (AI) algorithm, dubbed CAMEO (Closed-Loop Autonomous System for Materials Exploration), rapidly identified a potentially useful new material — a germanium-antimony-tellurium alloy (Ge4Sb6Te7) that is optimized for phase-change applications in data storage and photonic-switching devices. Tasked with…
Membrane extraction improves biofuel yield
Typically, the production of fuel-grade chemicals, such as butanol, from biomass fermentation processes involves low-yield batch processes and high energy costs. Now, researchers from Imperial College London (ICL; www.imperial.ac.uk), in partnership with bp plc (London; www.bp.com), have demonstrated a new…
January Chementator Briefs
MDI Production Late last year, Covestro AG (Leverkusen, Germany; www.covestro.com) started up a pilot plant for the production of methylene diphenyl diisocyanate (MDI) based on the innovative AdiP (adiabatic-isothermal phosgenation) technology at its Brunsbüttel site. The new technology promises to…
Enhancing photocatalytic activity by tuning wall thickness of TiO2 nanotubes
Titanium dioxide is well known as a photocatalyst, and is especially promising for degrading organic-based contaminant molecules in wastewater. Researchers from China and Australia have reported, in a recent issue of the Journal of Colloid and Interface Science, that controlling…
Immobilizing enzymes for biosensors
A new technique for making less-expensive, more-efficient biological enzyme hybrids could have widespread applications, including in water recycling, drug manufacturing and molecular biology. The technique, developed by a team from Australia and the U.S., involves using a vortex fluidic device…
Radiative cooling: A coating for windows that also cools
A Korean team has proposed an approach for passive radiative cooling. The team, which includes professors Junsuk Rho and Jin Kon Kim of Pohang Universiy of Science and Technology (Pohang, South Korea; www.postech.ac.kr) and professor Heon Lee of Korea University…
Process for recycling of cotton garments produces multi-ton quantities for testing
A process developed by Evrnu (Seattle, Wash.; www.evrnu.com) to regenerate cotton fibers from waste fabric and post-consumer garments has been used to produce ton quantities of recycled cotton fiber for testing. An economically viable process for recycling cotton would have…
Metso Outotec signs contracts in Russia for zinc, copper projects
Metso Outotec Corp. (Helsinki, Finland) has signed a contract to deliver a complete package of key process equipment for a greenfield zinc plant in Verkhny Ufaley in the Chelyabinsk region in Russia. The contract value of approximately EUR 100 million…
Air Liquide signs major biomethane contract in the U.K.
One of the leading retailers in the U.K., ASDA, has contracted Air Liquide S.A. (Paris, France) to install and operate six biomethane (BioNGV) distribution stations to refuel trucks on its sites. Alongside other investments to increase Air Liquide’s production and…