What is said to be the first grassroots lignite-fueled power plant to use powdered activated carbon (PAC) for mercury capture has been started up near Franklin, Tex., by Luminant (Dallas, Tex.). In its initial operation the 800-MWe supercritical plant has…
This summer, Celitement GmbH (Eggenstein-Leopoldshafen, Germany; www.celitement.de) will begin construction on a pilot plant to produce a new cement known as Celitement. Located at the north campus of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT; www.kit.edu), the facility will produce up…
A recently commercialized method for growing single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNs) in large quantities enables their use in a downstream process for depositing semiconducting inks onto flexible surfaces. Southwest NanoTechnologies Inc. (Norman, Okla.; www.swentnano.com) has developed a scalable technique (CoMoCAT process)…
Professor Shigeru Yamago and colleagues at the Institute for Chemical Research, Kyoto University (Japan; www.scl.kyoto-u.ac.jp/~yasuyuki/) have synthesized [8]cycloparaphenylene for the first time. The 11-nm-dia. molecule consists of eight benzene molecules linked together in a closed chain. The compound has a…
A patented (WO 2008/053174), fluidic-oscillator-driven device that generates microbubbles has been shown by researchers from the University of Sheffield (U.K.; www.shef.ac.uk/cpe), in collaboration with the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic (Prague; www.cas.cz/en), to improve the performance of air-lift…
In Malaysia, about 2-million metric tons (m.t.) of rice husk are produced each year, and the rice husk is either burned or disposed of as waste. Now this waste may find application as a non-leachable building material thanks to a…
Results of 12-mo immersion tests in biodiesel and bioethanol of a range of elastomer polymers typically used in fuel-handling equipment show that the seals are prone to significant swelling, which leads to failure in valves and other equipment, according to…
A newly marketed portable reactor system for generating hydrogen is capable of generating 1,000 L of the gas in 20 min. The volume is sufficient to fill a 5-ft-dia. weather balloon, which is the first market targeted by the system’s…
Researchers from the Center for Membrane Technology, Beijing University of Technology (China; www.bjut.edu.cn) have developed a new spiral-wound membrane module for use in oxygen-enriched combustion. A pilot-scale system with five membrane modules has been built and tested in a 4-ton,…
Water reclamation Last month, a new water-reclamation process for the oil-and-gas industry was launched by HBC Systems, a newly created joint venture between Hydration Technology Innovations (HTI; Scottsdate, Ariz.; www.htiwater.com) and Bear Creek Services, LLC (Albany, Ore.; www.bearcreekservices.com). The…