Today, all commercial lithium is sourced from ores or brines on land, where the total lithium reserves amount to 14 million tons. In contrast, the oceans contain 230 billion tons of lithium, although the lithium concentration in seawater is very…
The research group of Yabing Qi at Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST; Japan; https://groups.oist.jp/emssu), in collaboration with Shengzhong Liu at Shaanxi Normal University, China, has developed a simple method to fabricate thin (1µm) perovskite films that can be…
Shu Kobayashi and colleagues at the University of Tokyo (Japan; www.chem.s.u-tokyo.ac.jp) reported on two new catalysts for synthesizing fine chemicals using their continuous-flow reactor system. The first technology is a novel methodology using CsF.Al2O3 as a highly efficient, environmentally benign,…
O2 recycling A beta field trial has been successfully completed for an adsorption-based technology designed to separate unreacted oxygen in ozone-generating systems. The technology, known as Ozora, was developed by Linde LLC (Bridgewater, N.J.; www.lindeus.com), and was originally launched last…
A project has been announced to demonstrate Microvi’s (Hayward, Calif.; www.microvi.com) pollutant-removal-and-recovery technology for phosphorus in water. The objective of the demonstration is to reduce total phosphorus levels to 0.1 mg/L at a wastewater treatment plant. The nine-month project is…
A chemical vapor deposition (CVD) process that bonds a silicon-oxide film to metal surfaces of any shape is being scaled up by Wicoatec GmbH (Ulm, Germany; www.wicoatec.com). Serial production started in 2017 with pilot-scale equipment, and capacities will be tripled…
Leigh Creek Energy (Adelaide, South Australia; www.lcke.com.au) has received final approval from the South Australian government to start a three-month trial of underground coal gasification (UCG) at the site of the old Leigh Creek Coalfield, about 550 km north of…
An integrated catalytic process for the direct, Fischer-Tropsch (F-T) conversion of synthesis gas (syngas) into different types of liquid fuels, without subsequent hydro-refining post-treatments of F-T waxes, has been developed by the research group of professor Noritatsu Tsubaki at the…
A research team from the New Jersey Institute of Technology’s (NJIT; Newark, N.J.; www.njit.edu) Department of Chemistry and Environmental Science has discovered a new bacterium that may help to alleviate concerns about two of the most pervasive and toxic groundwater…
A new, inexpensive method to print large-scale sheets of two-dimensional (2-D) piezoelectric material has been developed by a team from RMIT University (Melbourne, Australia; www.rmit.edu.au) led by professor of electronic engineering Kourosh Kalantar-zadeh (now a professor of chemical engineering at…