Natural gas vehicles (NGVs) are attractive because of the low cost and wide availability of natural gas, plus the ability to connect to residential and business gas lines for fueling. Among the challenges for using natural gas as a fuel…
A spray-drying technology that applies an electrical charge to feedstock as it exits the atomizing nozzle allows significant reductions in processing temperature and can eliminate downstream processing steps. The charge application can improve control over particle morphology, lengthen shelflife of…
Recycling sachets Later this year, Unilever (London, U.K.; www.unilever.com) plans to open a pilot plant in Indonesia to test the long-term viability of its new technology for recycling plastic sachet (small bags) waste. The process, called CreaSolv, has been developed…
Membrane distillation (MD) — a thermal desalination technique used for recovering pure water from concentrated salt solutions — is hampered by high energy consumption, low single-pass recovery rates and by the need to use expensive heat exchangers to handle the…
Efforts continue to make nitric-acid production more efficient with lower emissions of greenhouse gases Like the ammonia used to make it, nitric acid (NA) continues to be produced by a process nearly a century old — the Ostwald process. Although…
More sophisticated packaging equipment helps the CPI boost product quality and machine reliability When it comes to packaging their products, chemical, pharmaceutical and food processors list product quality, often directly related to health and human safety, as the top concern,…
Plant Watch Ineos announces plans to build new PDH plant, increase ethylene capacity June 12, 2017 — Ineos (Rolle, Switzerland; www.ineos.com) announced plans to construct a propane dehydrogenation (PDH) unit in Europe. The plant will produce 750,000 metric tons per…
A new company — Tsubame BHB Co., Ltd. (Tokyo, Japan; www.tsubame-bhb.co.jp) — has been established to commercialize the world’s first on-site production of ammonia for supplying amino-acid synthesis, fermentation materials and fertilizers. The company — a joint venture of Ajinomoto…
Researchers at Princeton University (Princeton, N.J.; www.princeton.edu) have developed a water treatment technique that injects carbon dioxide gas into a stream of water to separate suspended particles that would be difficult to remove by sedimentation or by microbes. The system,…
Additive manufacturing (3-D printing) has quickly gained popularity, due in part to its potential for rapidly creating customized parts. However, one inherent limitation of additive manufacturing — specifically the high-speed fused deposition modeling (FDM) technique — is the potential for…