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…
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…
A catalyst in which iron atoms are complexed with the ligand pyridine diimine (PDI) has shown promise as a replacement for high-cost platinum-based catalysts for industrial olefin-hydrosilylation reactions. Developed by the research group of Paul Chirik at Princeton University (www.…
Double-effect coating Researchers at the Leibniz-Instutut für Neue Materialien GmbH (INM; Saarbrücken, Germany; www.inm-gmbh.de) have developed a nanocomposite coating that simultaneously protects against corrosion while having lubrication properties similar to grease and oil. The new material is suitable for coating…
Researches at the U.S. Dept. of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL; Oak Ridge, Tenn.; www.ornl.gov) are developing a process that makes carbon fibers with customized surface contours from polyethylene-based fibers. The patent-pending technique uses a combination of fiber-spinning and…
The technology surrounding a hydrolysis- and fermentation-based process that is capable of utilizing municipal solid waste (MSW) and biomass waste to produce cellulosic bioethanol at low cost is now available for licensing from its developer, TMO Renewables Ltd. (Guildford, U.K.;…
A novel cold-dry process makes possible the utilization of fine form-factor silicon, such as granules and sand-like fines, in the production of high-purity polysilicon for solar photovoltaic cells and semiconductors, where such fine-grained material would normally have to be sent…
Recovery boilers, in which pulp and paper companies burn spent black liquor from the kraft pulping process to recover and recycle sodium and sulfur, are a bottleneck in many paper mills. The reason is that they operate at their upper…
A distillation process that consumes 85% less energy than traditional methods has been demonstrated by researchers from the University of Tokyo’s Institute of Industrial Science (www.energy.iis.u-tokyo.ac.jp) and Nippon Steel Engineering (NSE, both Tokyo, www.nsc-eng.co.jp). The technique, which involves the incorporation…
In conventional hydrogen and ammonia plants, the final conversion of CO to H2 occurs across the low-temperature shift (LTS) catalyst. This makes the LTS catalyst one of the most important catalysts in the plant — even small changes in its…