Obtaining sugars from cellulosic biomass cost-effectively is difficult because the predominant biopolymers in plant material evolved to protect these sugars. A process currently being scaled up for obtaining sugars from waste agricultural biomass employs beams of accelerated electrons to fracture…
Researchers from South Korea have discovered a high-performance catalyst for the selective oxidation of methane to formaldehyde. The study was conducted by staff from Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (Ulsan; www.unist.ac.kr), Ajou University (Suwon; www.ajou.ac.kr) and Hanyang University…
A new, mechanical method for sequestration of carbon dioxide into water was evaluated at the University of Texas’ (Austin; www.utexas.edu) Bioproducts and Bioenergy Analytical Service Center and has revealed a pathway to economically improve algae growth for production of oils.…
In conventional solvent-based carbon-capture systems, CO2-rich exhaust gas contacts gravity-driven solvents in a vertical packed-bed column. A novel approach developed by Carbon Clean Solutions USA Inc. (CCSUS; Cumming, Ga.; www.carboncleansolutions.com) employs centrifugal force from rotating horizontal packed beds to effect…
Last month, Sunfire GmbH (Dresden, Germany; www.sunfire.de) reported the successful startup and test run (more than 500 h) of a high-temperature, co-electrolysis system at its Dresden site since November 2018. The technology, called Sunfire-Synlink, is based on solid-oxide cells and…
Today, olefins are mainly made either by naphtha cracking or by the catalytic conversion of dimethyl ether (DME), which is in-situ made from synthesis-gas- (syngas) derived methanol (methanol-to-olefin processes). Both naphtha cracking and syngas production (from steam-methane reforming; SMR) require…
Researchers from Case Western Reserve University (CWR; Cleveland, Ohio; www.case.edu) have shown that a hybrid electrolytic system using a gaseous plasma electrode can produce ammonia from water and nitrogen at ambient temperature and pressure — without any catalytic material surface.…
The quest to generate chemicals and fuels from exhaust or atmospheric carbon dioxide got a boost from a series of recent studies by researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBL; Berkeley, Calif.; www.lbl.gov), in which the scientists proved the viability…
Professor Kazuaki Ishigreo and colleagues at Nagoya University (Nagoya, Japan; http://en.nagoya-u.ac.jp) have shown that a chiral, supramolecular, U-shaped, boron Lewis acid catalyst (diagram) promotes the unprecedented multi-selective Diels–Alder reaction of propargyl aldehyde with cyclic dienes. The Diels–Alder reaction, which is…
A process that increases the water-recovery from reverse osmosis (RO) while producing a salt byproduct is being developed by Hyrec (Urla/Izmir, Turkey; www.hyrec.co). The process, which uses osmotically assisted RO (OARO), could be especially beneficial in coal-to-chemicals (CTC) plants in…