A process that makes glass by "zapping" the raw materials with a plasma as they fly through the air is being developed by Japanese researchers in a new project led by NEDO (New Energy & Industrial Technology Development Organization; Kawasaki,…
Engineers at MIT (Cambridge, Mass.; www.mit.edu) are developing solar concentrators that have the potential to increase the electrical power output from solar cells by a factor of more than 40. Instead of actually focusing the light, as in systems being…
Optoacoustic gas detection determines gas content via the measurement of acoustic pressure waves that are propagated as a gas is irradiated under an appropriately tuned light. A gaseous-mixture sample passes through a membrane into a measurement cell, which contains an…
The production of hydrogen by water splitting promises to become less expensive through a solar-energy process being developed at Penn State University (University Park, Pa.; www.psu.edu). Like other photoelectrochemical methods, the process splits water into its two components, generating O2…
Among this year’s award winners of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA; Washington, D.C.) Presidential Green Chemistry Challenge are: Battelle, SiGNa Chemistry, Inc., Nalco Co., Dow AgroSciences and Michigan State University. Battelle (Columbus, Ohio; www.battelle.org) received the Greener Synthetic Pathways…
Dow Chemical (Midland, Mich; www.dow.com) has started using a renewable energy source — methane from landfill gas — at its Dalton, Ga., plant where carpet latex is manufactured. As a result, carpet-backing products manufactured with the so-called Dow Lomax technology,…
Chisso Corp. (Tokyo, Japan; www.chisso.co.jp) has established a new joint-venture (JV) company to produce solar grade silicon using a new process that was first developed by Chisso and subsequently refined, jointly, by the three JV partners: Chisso (50% share), Nippon…
Corn residue left in fermenters after ethanol production could find a future use as a filler in plastics through research being done at the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture’s North Central Agricultural Research Laboratory (Brookings, S.D.; www.ars.usda.gov). The granular residue, called…
QuantumSphere, Inc. (Santa Ana, Calif.; www.qsinano.com) has commercialized electrodes coated with the firm’s Nano NiFe catalysts for making hydrogen in water electrolyzers. Available in production quantities, the electrodes effectively increase the surface area used in commercial electrolysis by about 1,000…
Time consuming and prone to error, microscopy — the manual counting of yeast cells with a hemocytometer — has long been the primary method for determining the progress of ethanol fermentation. However, a new joint development agreement between Fluid Imaging…