Alliant Energy (Madison, Wis.; www.alliantenergy.com) was recently selected to receive a $30-million grant from the U.S. Dept. of Energy’s Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations (OCED; Washington, D.C.; www.energy.gov/oced) for a proposed 200-MWh energy storage system. Alliant Energy’s new battery system,…
Building off of a process to efficiently manufacture graphene (see Chem. Eng., April 2022, p. 9), a team of researchers from Rice University (Houston, www.rice.edu) have uncovered that the process can be easily altered to also produce a nearly pure…
Researchers at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT; Germany; www.kit.edu) have developed a new class of materials — enzyme foams. Normally, foaming modifies the enzyme structure and enzymes lose their biocatalytic activity. The new protein foams, however, are said to…
Covestro AG (Leverkusen, Germany; www.covestro.com) has developed a chemolysis process for recycling polycarbonate back into monomers. In laboratory trials, the process has been shown to recycle waste streams with more than 50% polycarbonate content into monomers, closing the loop to…
A new, non-intrusive screening method developed by researchers from the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering (PME) at the University of Chicago (pme.uchicago.edu), as well as Argonne National Laboratory (Lemont, Ill.; www.anl.gov) and the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (www.uwm.edu), shows promise for…
In recent years, some car manufacturers have developed vehicles that integrate photovoltaic cells into the roof — the easiest surface to use for onboard solar-power generation. Now, researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems (Fraunhofer ISE; Freiburg, Germany;…
Carbon Capture Membrane Technology and Research, Inc. (MTR; Newark, Calif.; www.mtrinc.com) Carbon Capture announced it has commenced construction of a large pilot plant at the Wyoming Integrated Test Center (ITC) in Gillette, Wyoming. When operational in 2024, it will be…
Seawater is being used in a new electrolysis scheme for carbon dioxide removal (CDR), while also producing hydrogen as a byproduct. Developed by Equatic (Los Angeles, Calif.; www.equatic.tech), the platform draws seawater into a closed electrolysis system, taking advantage of…
Graphene has been touted as a “super” material, boasting ultra-high strength, superconductivity and many more superlative properties, but, as a planar two-dimensional material, its commercial use has been limited in terms of reactivity, since reactions can only occur at the…
Electrolyzers are typically associated with the production of “green” hydrogen from water and renewable electricity, but a new device borrows from traditional electrolyzer principles to convert CO2 into propane. A team of researchers from the Electrochemical Energy Materials and Devices…