Produced water from natural gas wells in the Marcellus Shale Deposit is extremely high in total dissolved solids (TDS; levels of 25–35% TDS are common) and barium, making the water difficult to re-use and requiring injection in underground geologic formations.…
While demand for the artificial sweetener xylitol grows, expensive raw materials and low yields have kept production prices high. Now, a new process from S2G BioChem (Vancouver, B.C., Canada; www.s2gbiochem.com) aims to produce xylitol in a more cost-effective way, utilizing…
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…
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…
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…
Although there are several ways to reduce the phenol concentration in industrial effluent, they each have drawbacks. Chemical treatment, such as adsorption and stripping, is fast but expensive, and the chemical degradation of phenol leads to the formation of toxic…
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,…
A new electrochemical water-treatment process developed in the laboratory of T. Alan Hatton, professor of chemical engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT; Cambridge; web.mit.edu), employs functionalized electrodes to selectively remove contaminants, such as pesticides and pharmaceuticals, at extremely low…
On May 31, Climeworks (Hinwill/Zurich, Switzerland; www.climeworks.com) inaugurated its — and the world’s — first commercial plant that captures CO2 directly from air. The Direct Air Capture (DAC) facility, located at the waste-utilization plant of KEZO in Hinwill, Switzerland, will…
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…