Milkweed, a plant that is toxic to farm animals and other creatures, may be a future source of a base material for sunscreen and other skin care products. Milkweed is harvested for floss, used as a hypoallergenic filler for pillows…
CSIRO Energy Technology (Newcastle, New South Wales, Australia; www.csiro.au) is developing a solar-powered air conditioning unit for residential use, using a desiccant-evaporative process to provide cool and dehumidified air. Thermally driven ab- or adsorption chillers are commonly used to provide…
A photocatalyst that is more active for decomposing volatile organic compounds (VOCs) with visible light than existing catalysts has been developed by researchers from the New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO; Kawasaki City, Japan) in a project lead…
Click here for full pdf version of this article - includes all graphs, charts, tables, and author information Construction to begin on a large solar plant in Spain Thanks to a €171-million financing deal, construction can begin on what is…
Thanks to a €171-million financing deal, construction can begin on what is claimed to be the world’s first utility-grade solar power plant with central tower and salt receiver technology. When the so-called Gemasolar plant — located in Fuentes de Andalucia,…
Mitsunori Shimura and colleagues at the R&D Center of Chiyoda Corp. (Yokohama, Japan; www.chiyoda.co.jp) have developed a new catalyst for producing a synthesis gas (syngas; hydrogen and carbon monoxide) from steam reforming of methane. The catalyst consists of precious metals…
Lurgi GmbH (Frankfurt, Germany; www.lurgi.com) is building a pilot plant to demonstrate the viability of its three-stage bioliq process for producing liquid fuels from biomass. The pilot plant — an entrained-flow gasifier for the production of synthesis gas — will…
For separating two components with similar volatilities, extractive distillation is typically used, whereby a high-boiling, non-volatile solvent is added to "break the azeotrope" — a process that is both energy intensive and often involves the use of hazardous solvents. In…
Ultrasound has been applied, with limited success, for the remediation of contaminated soil. Up to now, the approach has been to first extract the contaminant from the soil into a liquid, which is then passed through a sono-reactor where the…
In a so-called thermoacoustic engine, researchers from the Energy Research Center of the Netherlands (ECN; Petten, Netherlands; www.ecn.nl) have achieved a record efficiency in the conversion of heat to sound, improving the existing record of 41% to 48% of the…