Recovering valuable metals, such as cobalt and nickel, from used lithium-ion batteries is emerging as a key capability because of anticipated high battery demand and material shortages. Researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley, Calif.; www.lbl.gov) have developed a technology…
Perovskite materials have great potential as a lightweight and low-cost option for solar panels, but in the past have not been seen as stable or durable enough for widespread use in large-scale solar-power installations. Now, a new coating developed by…
Magnet Metals Bilfinger SE (Mannheim, Germany; www.bilfinger.com) is supporting REEtec AS (Oslo, Norway; www.reetec.no) with engineering, procurement, construction and management (EPCM) services for a new processing plant for neodymium and praseodymium — two rare earth elements (REE) used in the…
Last May, Axens (Rueil-Malmaison, France; www.axens.net) started up the first ethanol-to-ethylene pilot plant based on Axen’s Atol technology with Sumitomo Chemical Co., Ltd. (Tokyo, Japan; www.sumitomo-chem.co.jp). The pilot plant, located at Sumitomo Chemical’s Chiba Works, will produce ethylene from ethanol.…
A new advanced recycling process simplifies the task of breaking down polymer chains and stabilizing the resulting fragments. The Hydrochemolytic technology (HCT), developed by Aduro Clean Technologies, Inc. (Sarnia, Ont., Canada; www.adurocleantech.com), involves processing waste plastic with water, an inexpensive…
Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE; Washington, D.C.; www.energy.gov) Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL; Oak Ridge, Tenn.; www.ornl.gov) have developed a hydrothermal-synthesis method for high-voltage lithium-ion battery cathodes that avoids several key issues with traditional battery processing. Key…
Chemical engineers from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL; www.epfl.ch), in collaboration with scientists from Toyota Motor Europe (Zaventem, Belgium; www.toyota-europe.com), have invented a photoelectrochemical (PEC) “artificial leaf” that splits water vapor into H2. The technology features a…
For the first time, a quantum-computing-inspired tool has been used for catalyst discovery — specifically for the investigation of a new catalyst for the production of hydrogen via electrolysis. Created jointly by scientists from Fujitsu Ltd. (Tokyo; www.fujitsu.com) and the…
Blue Planet Systems (Los Gatos, Calif.; www.blueplanetsystems.com) and Sulzer Chemtech Ltd. (Winterthur, Switzerland; www.sulzer.com) have announced a partnership to accelerate development of Blue Planet’s process for mineralizing carbon dioxide gas into construction aggregate for concrete. By sequestering CO2 into the…
Production of ammonia by the Haber-Bosch process not only requires a lot of energy for the high-temperature (300–500°C) synthesis of NH3 itself, but the recovery of ammonia takes place by condensation at –20°C. As a result, large changes in both…