Chementator
Predictive process control at a refinery wastewater treatment plant
To date, the difficult-to-treat contaminants and their related biological inhibition in petroleum refinery wastewater have defied efforts to bring predictive and mathematical process control to biological wastewater-treatment systems. Now, for the first time, engineers at Refinery Water Engineering & Associates…
A new catalyst for asymmetric-transfer-hydrogenation reactions
The Fine Chemicals div. of Takasago International Corp. (Tokyo, Japan; www.takasago.com) has commercialized Deneb: Oxo-Tethered Ruthenium (II) Complex, which shows higher catalytic activities compared to conventional RuCl (arene)(N-sulfonylated diamine) catalyst systems. The higher activity enables a reduction in catalyst loading…
New catalyst allows lower-temperature waste destruction
Base-catalyzed decomposition (BCD) is a commercially used process developed in the early 1990s by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA; Washington, D.C.) for the destruction of persistent organic pollutants (POPs). It has been used as an alternative to incineration for…
Thin-film membranes promise a dramatic reduction in energy use
Researchers at the University of Minnesota (Minneapolis/St. Paul; www.umn.edu) have produced thin-film zeolite membranes that are only 200 nm thick, compared to 5–10 µm for conventional zeolite membranes. The new membranes could cut energy and capital costs by 90% for…
Commercial debut for a new olefins-production process
Last month, KBR (Houston; www.kbr.com) was awarded a license and process-design-package contract for a new olefins-production unit using the Advanced Catalytic Olefins (ACO) technology. The contract represents the first license of the ACO process, which catalytically cracks naphtha and other…
A polarizable membrane for improved energy storage
The two basic energy-storage devices — dielectric and double-layer capacitors — entail serious limitations. Dielectric capacitors have low capacitance, on the order of 0.1 to 1.0 µF/cm2, while the double-layer capacitor has a high capacitance, on the order of 0.5…
Dewatering enzymes boost ethanol production efficiency
A technique that improves the efficiency of ethanol plants by lowering the cost of dewatering the byproduct stillage (a slurry of corn solids and water) from the fermentation process has been developed by scientists at the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s…
A new heterogeneous catalyst for low-temperature VOC decomposition
Professor Yuki Taniguchi at the Chemicals Research Institute, Tokyo Institute of Technology (Japan, www.res.titech.ac.jp/~gosei/taniguchi/index.html) has developed a new catalyst system that decomposes volatile organic compounds (VOCs) at lower temperatures than that required by conventional catalysts. The SILP (supported ionic liquid…
Waste-to-ethanol plant on pace for mid-2012 operation
Impending standards requiring that cellulosic ethanol be used in gasoline blending have focused attention on building a capacity for bioethanol from non-food sources. In a development that may begin to meet that need, a plant employing a unique method for…
U.S. production is scheduled for a critical metal
China produces about 98% of the world’s electrolytic manganese metal (EMM), a vital ingredient used in specialty steels, aluminum and electronics. In contrast, the U.S. produces no EMM, says Nick Weir, an executive with U.S. American Manganese Inc. (AMY; White…