Squalane, an emollient used in cosmetics, will be the first product of a biotechnology pilot plant now being started up by Nucelis Inc. (San Diego, Calif.; www.nucelis.com), a spin-off from Cibus (also of San Diego). The plant will use Cibus’…
NEDO and Hitachi Ltd. (Tokyo, www.hitachi.com) have developed a new combustion technology that could reduce the emissions of oxides of nitrogen (NOx) to below 10 ppm without the addition of diluents. As part of the CCS-IGCC project (carbon capture and…
ODC for Cl2 production Last month, ThyssenKrupp Uhde GmbH (Dortmund; www.uhde.eu) and Bayer MaterialScience AG (BMS; Leverkusen, both Germany; www.bayermaterialscience.com) commercially launched — worldwide — the oxygen depolarized cathode (ODC) technology, which BMS and ThyssenKrupp Uhde/UhdeNora developed to improve…
In April development tests, Cobalt Technologies (Cobalt; Mountain View, Calif; www.cobalttech.com) produced n -butanol at the fermentation scale of 100 m3 per run, demonstrating lower production cost than butanol produced from petroleum. This represents production that is a factor of…
To comply with increasingly stringent regulations for NOx emissions, operators of industrial plants often turn to low-NOx burners to avoid much more costly post-combustion treatment approaches like selective catalytic reduction (SCR). But low-NOx burners are plagued by significant losses in…
Seiko PMC Corp. (Tokyo; www.seikopmc.co.jp) has installed a pilot plant for the production of cellulose nanofibers (CNFs) at its Ryugasaki Factory, and will begin shipping samples next spring with the aim of commercial activities in 2015. In collaboration with professor…
Ceramic paper A paper-like material made from vanadium-pentoxide ceramic that is as hard as copper and can be folded or rolled up has been produced by scientists at Stuttgart University (www.uni-stuttgart.de), the Max-Planck Institute (MPI) for Intelligent Systems (www.is.mpg.de)…
Selecting air-pollution control equipment can be tricky. It’s not only difficult to determine which pollutants must be controlled, but also which type of equipment will best control them to required levels for any given process or facility because there is…
What is said to be the world’s first commercial alkylation plant to use a solid acid catalyst is scheduled for startup early next year by Shandong Wonfull Petrochemical Group Co. (Zibo, China). The plant, which will produce 100,000 ton/yr of…
The temperature and moisture level of the air being drawn into the front end of ammonia, nitrogen, nitric acid or other plant air compressors directly impacts the yield from the process, and chilling is a way to debottleneck air production…