Chementator
Chementator Briefs
New adsorbent Last month, BASF SE (Ludwigshafen, Germany; www.basf.com) launched Sorbead Air, an efficient adsorbent for drying compressed air. The adsorbents are hard, spherical beads of alumino-silicate gel that resist abrasion. Due to the beads’ large surface area and pore…
Extracting gold without cyanide
The first gold using a process without cyanide and without mercury has been produced using technology from CSIRO Minerals Technology (www.csiro.au) at a demonstration plant in the Western Australian goldfields town of Menzies. Cyanide is used in more than 90%…
Measure bulk solids in piles and silos
Advances in sensing and imaging technologies have enabled new levels of accuracy in the measurement of bulk-solid materials stored in piles, silos and bins. BinMaster (Lincoln, Neb.; www.binmaster.com) and Stockpile Reports (Redmond, Wash.; www.stockpilereports.com) have collaborated to introduce the industry’s…
Japan takes a major step toward a hydrogen-based economy
A Japanese consortium has started the construction of the Fukushima Hydrogen Energy Research Field (FH2R), which is said to be the world’s largest hydrogen-based energy system — a step towards a hydrogen-based economy. Located in Namie-cho, Fukushima Prefecture, FH2R will…
Advanced thermal hydrolysis pretreatment boosts biogas production
Thermal hydrolysis of wastewater sludge before it enters anaerobic digestion units can increase the rate of residuals-to-biogas conversion (biogas production) and increase the feed concentration, the combination of which significantly reduces anaerobic-digester reactor volume. An advanced thermal hydrolysis process (THP)…
Making multifunctional windows
Concern with energy efficiency has increased the popularity of window glass coatings that control the amount of sunlight that passes through, as well as windows made of thin solar cells that can turn them into electricity generators. Now researchers from…
CO2-to-methanol
Researchers from Penn State University (State College, Pa.; www.psu.edu) and Dalian University of Technology (Dalian, China; www.dlut.edu.cn) have improved the CO2-to-methanol process by using a catalyst that combines copper and palladium. Using a palladium-to-copper atomic ratio range of 0.3 to…
Solvent-based process to recycle multilayered film
Later this year (Q4 2018), APK AG (Merseburg, Germany; www.apk-ag.de) will start up the first commercial plant to recycle multilayer packaging using the company’s solvent-based Newcycling process. The plant will process 8,000 metric tons per year (m.t./yr) of post-industrial multilayer…
Non-thermal treatment method for high-salinity produced water
A new pilot project brings together advanced membrane filtration with non-thermal, zero-liquid-discharge (ZLD) solvent exchange to efficiently treat high-salinity produced water from oil-and-gas operations. PetroH2O Recovery (Southlake, Tex.; www.petroh2o.com) is currently building a pilot plant with the capacity to process…
CNT-based photocatalysts enable solar water splitting
Splitting water with sunlight is a sustainable and environmentally friendly way to make hydrogen, but the conversion efficiency is presently very low, because current photocatalysts only work using ultraviolet radiation — a small fraction (3–5%) of sunlight. Now, a promising…