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…
Improved C5 use Some 106,000 ton/yr of so-called spent C5 fraction is generated at Mitsui Chemicals Inc.’s (Mitsui; Tokyo, Japan; www.mitsuichem.com) naphtha cracker at its Chiba Factory. Presently, the company is selling about half of the C5 fraction (50,000 ton/yr)…
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.…
Codexis (Redwood City, Calif.; www.codexis.com) and CO2 Solution (Quebec City, Canada; www.co2solution.com) have jointly developed a cost-effective method for capturing carbon dioxide from coal-fired power plants. Solvent-based systems for capturing CO2 are relatively well-understood, but they have not been widely…
A magnetic composite based on reduced graphene oxide (RGO) has been developed by a Korean team with an exceptional capacity to remove arsenic from drinking water. The team, headed by professor Kwang S. Kim from the Center for Superfunctional Materials,…
An enhanced reactor technology that boosts the speed of producing bioethanol by a factor of four while decreasing production costs by 25% compared to a stirred batch fermenter has been developed by IHI Corp. (IHI; Tokyo; www.ihi.co.jp). The technology features…
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…
Photovoltaic cells typically operate at 20% efficiency in converting solar energy to electricity. A new system that could boost the efficiency to as much as 60% by combining the light and heat of solar radiation is being developed at Stanford…