Standardized steam-methane-reforming (SMR) reactor units recently commercialized by Air Liquide (Paris, France; www.airliquide.com) allow direct hydrogen production at customer sites at costs much lower than those associated with alternative H2 supply modes, including electrolysis and transporting compressed or liquefied H2.…
A group of Singapore researchers have reported a new approach to induce the coiling of prefabricated gold nanowires (AuNWs) inside polymer shells, leading to structures resembling torsion springs. In contrast to gas-phase methods that require high temperatures and are limited…
Photos: Teijin Group Toho Tenax Co. (Tokyo; www.tohotenax.com), the main company of the Teijin Group’s carbon fibers business, has commercialized a gas-diffusion layer (GDL) made of carbon fiber fabric for use as an electrode component for fuel cells. GDLs are…
A plasma-based process has achieved a 30% yield of methanol from methane in a microreactor system developed by a research team led by Tomohiro Nozaki, associate professor at Tokyo Institute of Technology (TiTech; Tokyo, www.mech.titech.ac.jp). The yield is nearly the…
Westec Environmental Solutions, LLC (WES; Chicago, Ill.; www.wes-worldwide.com) has developed a gas-liquid absorption technology that can dramatically enhance mass transfer in gas-liquid absorption, extraction and scrubbing systems. The patented WES Absorber operates co-currently and creates a micro-froth matrix that intensifies…
Enerkem Inc. (Montreal, Can-ada; www.enerkem.com) has broken ground in Edmonton, Alberta, on what is said to be the world’s first industrial-scale plant to produce liquid fuel from municipal solid waste. When the plant starts up at the end of 2011,…
Plastic derived from corn, used mostly for bottles and cups, costs about 20% more than petroleum-based plastics, but has two desirable qualities: it comes from a renewable resource and is biodegradable. However, the use of the plastic — polylactic acid…
Graphene Laboratories Inc. (Reading, Mass.; www.graphenelab.com) and CVD Equipment Corp. (Ronkonkoma, N.Y.; www.cvdequipment.com) recently announced the commercial launch of single-layer graphene films, marketed as CVDGraphene, grown by a chemical vapor deposition (CVD) process. Using slightly modified CVD equipment that has…
Last month at the IFAT Entsorga trade fair (September 13–17; Munich, Germany), Süd-Chemie AG (Munich; www.sud-chemie.com) introduced a chemical-free process that increases the energy production of wastewater-purification and biogas plants by as much as 30% while significantly reducing the disposal…
Professor Kazuaki Ishihara and colleagues at Nagoya University (Nagoya, Japan;www.nubio.nagoya-u.ac.jp/indexe.HTM) has discovered an efficient, chiral, salt-based hypervalent iodine catalyst that could replace toxic metal catalysts without generating the waste or explosion risks associated with hypervalent organo-iodine complexes. The researchers took…