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Manufacturing bee silk with bacteria

A partnership between Australian research agency CSIRO (Melbourne, Australia; www.csiro.au) and Lonza Group Ltd. (Basel, Switzerland; www.lonza.com), aims to market new insect silk products globally. Potential applications of insect silk include composite fibers for the aviation and marine industries, and…

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A non-crop-based sugar feedstock for bio-based chemicals and biofuels

Proterro Inc. (Princeton, N.J.; www. proterro.com) has demonstrated technology for directly producing sucrose as a feedstock for bio-based chemicals and biofuels that avoids the need for cellulosic biomass and energy crops. Using a genetically engineered strain of photosynthetic cyanobacteria and…

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Detecting VOCs with a quantum-tunneling composite

A sensor that detects volatile organic compounds (VOCs) at levels of 10–100 parts per million (ppm) is being developed by Peratech Ltd. (Richmond, U.K.; www.peratech.com), with collaboration from the University of Durham (U.K.; www.dur.ac.uk). The so-called Electronic Nose is based…

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The first synthesis and isolation of a ‘heavy ketone’

For the first time, researchers from Riken (Saitama, Japan; www.riken.go.jp) have synthesized stable crystals (photo) of a so-called heavy ketone — a compound in which the carbon of the C=O bond is replaced by Si, Ge, Sn or Pb. These…

Chlorine dioxide single-stage NOx scrubbing technology lowers costs

A new process for removing oxides of nitrogen (NOx) from industrial foul-air and cool combustion exhaust uses ClO2 in a unique way to remove over 99% of both NO and NO2 with a single scrubbing stage. The reaction vessel is…

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Distillation: Avoid Problems During Tower Startup

A variety of performance problems can arise in distillation towers during startup. Many are caused by equipment, hardware or process conditions. Hardware issues may be related to instrumentation, tower internals or ancillaries. Instrumentation malfunctions are also common during startup and…

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A new catalyst enables room-temperature interconversion of CO2 and formic acid

A new catalyst that converts H2 and CO2 into formic acid under mild conditions has been developed by researchers at the Solar Light Energy Conversion Group of Energy Technology Research Institute, National Institute for Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST;…

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Base-catalyzed nucleophyllic additions with a modified zeolite

A new solid-state basic catalyst for forming carbon-carbon bonds has been developed by Masaru Ogura, an associate professor, and his research group at the Institute of Industrial Science, University of Tokyo (www.u-tokyo.ac.jp). The catalyst has been shown to accelerate the…

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Scaleup for a new delignification process

This month, Borregaard Industries Ltd. (Sarpsborg, Norway; www.borregaard.com) will start up an integrated, pilot-demonstration plant to further develop a new pretreatment process for converting biomass into lignin and fermentable sugars. Located at the company’s R&D Center in Sarpsborg, the pilot…

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A more sensitive sensor for ions in solution

A research team from the Institute for Photonics and Advanced Sensing, and the School of Chemistry and Physics, the University of Adelaide, South Australia (www.adelaide.edu.au) has combined suspended-core microstructured optical fibers (MOFs) with photoinduced electron transfer (PET) to demonstrate a…