Designing plastics that can be broken down easily after their use phase have often required a trade-off between stability and ease of deconstruction. Recent research by scientists at Rutgers University (New Brunswick, N.J.; www.rutgers.edu) opens a path to resolve that…
Fatty acids are indispensable ingredients in a broad range of high-value products, including pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, food additives, industrial lubricants and many more. Current commercial production plants usually employ a thermal fat-splitting process that is often not economical for small- and…
The widely used plastic polyethylene terephthalate (PET) can be depolymerized by reacting it with sodium hydroxide (NaOH) under strong mechanical impact from metal spheres in a ball mill. This type of mechanochemical route to recycling could alleviate some of the…
The production of commercially important hydrocarbons from synthesis gas (syngas; mixtures of H2 and CO) using the Fischer-Tropsch (F-T) process is a key strategy for making fuels and chemicals from a range of non-petroleum feedstocks. But F-T processes are relatively…
Among the major challenges facing efforts to chemically recycle common waste plastics is that many methods require a pure stream of a single type of polymer to be effective. Now, researchers at Northwestern University (NU; Evanston, Ill.; www.northwestern.edu), led by…
Pharmaceutical residues, particularly from antibiotics, are extremely difficult to fully remove from wastewater using traditional bulk-treatment methods, wherein antibiotic compounds are often only partially broken down. Even at trace amounts, antibiotic fragments can accumulate and wreak havoc on natural ecosystems.…
Increased concern around per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) in water is necessitating more robust mitigation techniques. There are many technologies that can effectively capture or destroy PFAS, but challenges remain surrounding large volumes of PFAS-laden solid waste and fluorinated byproducts.…
Palladium is widely used in membrane applications because of its extreme selectivity for hydrogen. However, conventional palladium membranes can be damaged at the high temperatures required for many processes that generate hydrogen for various subsequent uses, including the manufacture of…
By replacing traditional silicon or graphite anode materials with specially crystallized niobium, manufacturers can overcome some of the safety and power limitations of traditional lithium-ion batteries (LIBs). Echion Technologies Ltd. (Cambridge, U.K.; www.echiontech.com) has developed a proprietary mixed niobium-oxide active…
Siloxanes — synthetic chains of alternating silicon and oxygen atoms — are widely used in personal care products, soaps, pharmaceutical formulations and other products, but are notoriously difficult to manage in production- and waste-fluid streams. Current approaches, including flaring and…