In The News
Commercial MOFs on the horizon
A partnership between materials company NuMat Technologies (Skokie, Ill.; www.numat-tech.com) and The Linde Group (Munich, Germany; www.the-linde-group.com) is set to bring metal-organic-framework (MOF) materials into the mainstream industrial-gas sector. Touted for their extremely high surface area and adsorption capacity, MOFs…
Plasma oxidation disinfects water without the addition of chemicals
A new technology that uses plasma to kill bacteria and simultaneously oxidize organic material in water systems offers a non-chemical alternative to water treatment in several industry sectors, such as food and beverage, power generation, oil and gas and others.…
Tin-based catalyst for photodecomposition
Daylight-driven photocatalysts have attracted much attention in the context of “green” technology for reducing pollutants. Although a number of active materials have been reported and their applications are rapidly increasing, many are discovered after enormous experimental efforts. Now, Isao Tanaka…
Making ammonia at milder conditions
Ammonia is a crucial chemical feedstock for fertilizer production, as well as a potential energy carrier. However, the current, century-old method of synthesizing ammonia, the Haber–Bosch process, consumes a great deal of energy, operating at high pressures (several hundred atmospheres)…
This desalination process uses much less energy than RO
An adsorption desalination and cooling (ADC) plant has been implemented at Solar Village near the Saudi Arabian capital of Riyadh, by King Abdulaziz City of Science and Technology (KACST; www.kacst.edu.sa). The project to build the plant resulted from a collaboration…
Business News – November 2016
Plant Watch Covestro doubles polycarbonate resin production capacity in Shanghai October 12, 2016 — Covestro AG (Leverkusen, Germany; www.covestro.com) is doubling production capacities for polycarbonate resin from 200,000 to 400,000 metric tons per year (m.t./yr) by inaugurating two new production…
This alkylation process uses an ionic liquid catalyst
A new alkylation technology that uses ionic liquids as a catalyst has been licensed by Honeywell UOP (Des Plaines, Ill.; www.uop.com), and will be marketed under the tradename Isoalkyl. The technology — developed by Chevron U.S.A. Inc., a subsidiary of…
A Look Inside Advanced Materials Analysis
Testing and characterization techniques are rising to meet the demands of increasingly complex materials and applications Ensuring the integrity of materials is essential in the chemical process industries (CPI) for the continued maintenance of long-lifetime process equipment like vessels and…
Recycling textiles into reusable cotton, polyesters and silver
Millions of tons of cotton-polyester-blend material that would normally be discarded in landfills could be recycled using a newly patented method for removing dyes from textiles, separating cotton from fabric blends, and depolymerizing polyesters. The process, developed and demonstrated by…
The Changing Face of Maintenance
Connected enterprises and intelligent instrumentation promote predictive maintenance and improve reliability Process reliability is one of the most important factors in achieving a profit for producers in the chemical process industries (CPI). However, maintenance departments in these facilities deal with…