One of the current methods for dealing with oil spills is through the use of dispersants. These dispersants, however, break oil into small globules that sink into the water, spreading the oil into a wider area, and they have toxic…
Kinki University (www.kindai.ac.jp) and Naniwa Roki Co. (both Osaka, Japan; www.naniwaroki.co.jp) have developed a continuous process for producing a next-generation solid fuel, called Bio-cokes. The process is being used at a new production facility located at Kinki University Research Institute…
Composite liquid and slurry boiler fuels have been produced from mixtures of various waste materials, such as biomass, coal- and crude-oil-processing residues, wood and other combustible substances, in a collaboration between researchers at the University of Rhode Island (Kingston, R.I.)…
Researchers at the U.S. Dept. of Energy’s (DOE) Ames Laboratory (Ames, Iowa; www.ameslab.gov) led by Ryan Ott have developed a process for recovering rare-earth (RE) metals from magnet scraps. The process involves first crushing neodymium-iron-boron magnet scraps and placing the…
For the first time, it has become possible to spin carbon nanotubes (CNTs) into a fiber that looks and acts like textile threads, yet has the electrical conductivity and strength of a metal. The breakthrough, which came after more than…
A photocatalyst that reduces CO2 into carbon monoxide is being commercialized by Tokyo Chemical Industry Co. (Tokyo, Japan; www.tcichemicals.com/en/jp/index.html). Developed by Osamu Ishitani and his research group at Tokyo Institute of Technology (TiTech; Japan; www.chemistry.titech.ac.jp/~ishitani/index-jp.htm), the catalyst is a step…
A research group at Rice University (Houston; www.rice.edu) has developed a method for vaporizing water into steam using sunlight-illuminated nanoparticles, with only a small fraction of the energy heating the fluid. Sub-wavelength metal or carbon particles are intense absorbers of…
Under an ARPA contract Gas Technology Institute (GTI, Des Plaines, Ill.; www.gastechnology.org) is developing a process to convert natural gas directly into methanol and hydrogen. The process is much simpler and more efficient than the conventional high-temperature and capital-intensive steam-reforming…
An Indian team from the Institute of Minerals & Materials Technology (www.immt.res.in), and Utkal University (both Bhubaneswar, Orissa, India; www.utkal-university.org) has achieved significant improvement in the recovery of nickel from lateritic ore by using oxalic acid produced by the fungus…
Soy polyurethanes Scientists at Battelle (Columbus, Ohio; www.battelle.org) have developed a water-based polyurethane (PU) that uses soy oil instead of petroleum to produce the polyol precursor. Whereas standard water-based PUs require adding N-methyl-2-pyrrolidone (NMP) tolower viscosity, Battelle's process eliminates…