Synfuels China Technology Co. (Beijing; www.synfuelschina.com.cn) says it has developed a high-temperature slurry Fischer-Tropsch (F-T) process (flowsheet) that produces mainly clean diesel, naphtha and liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) products, with unique features including: high productivity of proprietary catalyst; efficient recovery…
Professor Shu Kobayashi and his research group at The School of Science, University of Tokyo (Japan; www.chem.s.u-tokyo.ac.jp/users/synorg/index_E.html) have developed an osmium-based catalyst for performing asymmetric syntheses of drug precursors. While showing the same catalytic performance of its predecessor — a…
French researchers from the Institut Européen des Membranes (CNRS/ENSCM, Université Montpiellier; www.iemm.univ-mont2.fr) and the Institut de Chimie Radicalaire (CNRS, Aix-Marseille Université) have developed what is claimed to be the first dynamic membrane for water filtration that not only can adjust…
Last month, Solvay Group (Brussels, Belgium; www.solvay.com) unveiled a methane recovery system (the MaRS Project) that captures methane liberated by mining trona ore (trisodium hydrogendicarbonate dihydrate), and pipes the gas to nearby processing facilities as a fuel for process heating.…
The Yankuang Group (Zoucheng City, Shandong Province; www.ykjt.cn), one of China’s largest coal companies, and Accelergy Corp. (Houston; www.accelergy.com), are jointly developing a large-scale, low-carbon, coal-to-liquids (CTL) plant incorporating both direct and indirect liquefaction, in Erdos in China’s Inner Mongolia…
Two dissimilar iron-making methods — a conventional blast furnace using coke from coal, and gas-based direct reduction of iron ore — are combined in a process being developed by Midrex Technologies, Inc. (Charlotte, N.C.; www.midrex.com) and Praxair Inc. (Danbury, Conn.;…
Differential pressure can be a tough problem for butterfly valves, in that it can cause damaging cavitation. As a rule of thumb, for instance, a typical butterfly valve can only handle a maximum of 30% differential pressure (DP), explains René…
A system that continuously produces 10 ton/yr of nanoparticles has been developed by Tadafumi Adschiri, principal investigator at the Advanced Institute for Materials Research (AIMR) and professor at the Institute of Multidisciplinary Research for Advanced Materials and New Industry Hatchery…
The production rate (per amount of catalyst) for generating liquid hydrocarbons from syngas by the Fischer-Tropsch (F-T) process, using a slurry reactor or tubular reactor, is generally limited to about 30% of the maximum rate. The restraining factor is heat…
Petroleum-derived ethylene normally contains traces of acetylene, which interferes with the conversion of ethylene into polyethylene (PE). Because it is difficult to separate it, the acetylene is selectively hydrogenated to ethylene — without subsequent hydrogenation to ethane — using a…