In The News
Printing 2-D piezoelectric materials for sensors and energy harvesting
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…
Bio-based adsorbent material removes PFAS compounds from water
Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) have been widely used for high-performance fire-fighting and in the manufacture of durable goods for their chemical inertness, non-stick properties and fire resistance. They have also raised health concerns because they do not degrade in…
Brewing Technology: An Old Art Looks Forward
Research and development in the brewing industry is peaking, driven by efforts to improve quality, efficiency and sustainability Within the chemical process industries (CPI), the brewing industry is among the sectors with the deepest historical roots and the most entrenched…
Engineering Challenges? There’s a Mobile Application for That
Mobile applications for the CPI simplify process engineering challenges and enhance plant optimization Most everyone recalls the Apple tagline boasting, “There’s an app for that.” It appears Apple was ahead of its time; today, there really is an application (app)…
Plant Watch: November 2018
Plant Watch Covestro to invest €1.5 billion in new, world-scale MDI plant in Baytown October 9, 2018 — Covestro AG (Leverkusen, Germany; www.covestro.com) approved an investment of around €1.5 billion to build a new methylene diphenyl diisocyanate (MDI) plant in…
Gas-solid reaction makes efficient solar cells
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…
Two new catalysts for continuous-flow synthesis
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,…
Chementator Briefs
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…
Water-pollutant-removal technology extended to phosphorus
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…
Thin, organo-ceramic coating improves corrosion and fouling resistance of metal components
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…