Fermenting sugar is at the heart of many bio-based chemical and biofuel processes, but obtaining sugars from cellulosic biomass at low cost is an ongoing challenge. A new process using a reusable solid catalyst is capable of breaking down a…
When coal-derived synthesis gas (syngas) is converted to liquid fuel by the Fischer-Tropsch (F-T) process, the initial product is mostly straight-chain waxy paraffins that can be upgraded by hydroprocessing to obtain diesel fuel and naphtha, which are used for gasoline…
Researchers at the University of California Irvine (UCI, Irvine CA; www.chem.uci.edu) have taken a cue from nature in devising a way to remove carbon dioxide from fluegas. They are developing a synthetic membrane based on the design and function of…
AMT International Inc. (Plano, Texas; www.amtintl.com) and LG Chem, Ltd. (Seoul, Korea; www.lgchem.com) have successfully converted an existing sulfolane liquid-liquid extraction (LLE) unit at LG Chem’s Yeosu plant using a new extractive-distillation (ED) process for aromatics recovery. This technology was…
Cement manufacturing is a major source of greenhouse gas emissions due to two factors: carbon dioxide is released when calcium carbonate calcines to lime (CaO) in the cement manufacturing process; and cement kilns are operated at temperatures of 1,500°C, which…
The selective, one-step biocatalytic hydroxylation of benzene to phenol — at ambient pressure and temperature — has been demonstrated by professors Yoshihito Watanabe and Osamu Shoji at Nagoya University (Nagoya, Japan; bioinorg.chem.nagoya-u.ac.jp). The achievement was made using a wild-type of…
Solar steam The Middle East’s first solar enhanced-oil-recovery (EOR) project was recently commissioned by Petroleum Development Oman (PDO; Muscat, Oman; www.pdo.co.om). The project uses Enclosed Trough technology from GlassPoint (Fremont, Calif.; www.glasspoint.com) to produce an average of 50 ton/d of…
Although the inactivation of bacteria by high-power ultrasound has been extensively studied, the relationship between the effectiveness of ultrasound to inactivate bacteria and their physico-chemical properties is not yet well understood, says Muthupandian Ashokkumar, professor at the University of Melbourne…
Launched this month at drinktec (Trade Fair for the Beverage and Liquid Food Industry; September 16–20; Munich, Germany), Eco-IcePush is a new technology for recovering products during equipment purging, and is being offered by GEA Process Engineering A/S (Søborg, Denmark),…
Many investigations are ongoing to achieve ammonia synthesis at energy-saving mild conditions instead of the high temperatures and pressures (500°C, 300 atm) required by the commonly used Haber-Bosch process, which consumes more than 1% of the world’s power production. Now,…