Adipate diesters are building blocks of polyamides and polyesters, and are used in plasticizers, perfumes, lubricants, solvents, various pharmaceutical active ingredients and, in terms of quantity, mainly for the production of nylon. Currently, adipate diesters are produced industrially by oxidizing…
Ultrathin membrane Researchers led by professors Hideto Matsuyama and Tomohisa Yoshioka at Kobe University’s Research Center for Membrane and Film Technology (Japan; www.research.kobe-u.ac.jp) have developed an ultrathin, fouling-resistant membrane that separates oil from water. Described in a recent issue of…
Dynamic Modifiers LLC (Atlanta, Ga.; www.dynamicmodifiers.com), a maker of custom polyolefin compounds, recently introduced PAL…VersaCHAR, a non-halogenated flame-retardant polymer designed to be molded over other materials. When exposed to flame, the formulation’s surface chars quickly, which prevents flame spread and…
An international team of researchers has developed metallic nanoparticles that imitate enzymes to convert carbon dioxide into ethanol and propanol, which are common raw materials for the chemical industry. The team includes professors Justin Gooding and Richard Tilley from the…
Researchers from the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (Singapore; https://smart.mit.edu) have discovered a way to study the properties of a nanoparticle without damaging it, which has not been possible so far. The work was led by Michael Strano, a…
Professor Monoj Kumar Mondal and Anuj Kumar Prajapati from the Dept. of Chemical Engineering and Technology, Indian Institute of Technology (Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, India; www.iitbhu.ac.in) have used nanoporous activated garlic stem carbon (AGSC) — prepared from garlic stem waste…
With the goal of decreasing the climate impact of residential air conditioning (AC), Kraton Corp. (Houston; www.kraton.com) has developed the NexarCool technology in collaboration with Texas A&M University (College Station; www.tamu.edu), India Institute of Technology Bombay (www.iitb.ac.in) and Indian companies…
Sludge to fuel Bio-sludge is a byproduct of the wastewater treatment process at Stora Enso Oy’s (Helsinki, Finland; www.storaenso.com) Heinola fluting mill in Finland. In the past, the mill had been burning the bio-sludge at the power station for generating…
Perovskites are a class of synthetic materials that have a crystalline structure similar to that of the naturally occurring mineral calcium titanate. They have been the subject of many studies because they exhibit unique properties that can be tuned according…
Small-scale pilot testing has begun for a process that extracts nickel, manganese, cobalt and copper from nodules collected from the surface of the Pacific Ocean seafloor. Obtaining the metals from the seabed nodules has advantages over mining land-based ores because…