A new type of CO2-capture media based on permeable polymer microcapsules has been developed by teams of scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (Livermore, Calif.; www.llnl.gov), Harvard University (Cambridge, Mass.; www.harvard.edu) and the University of Illinois-Urbana-Champaign (www.illinois.edu). The materials have…
New sensor, sealing and vapor-recovery technologies aim to reduce methane emissions On January 14, the Obama Administration announced a new goal to cut methane emissions from the oil-and-gas (O&G) sector by 40–45% from 2012 levels by 2025. The announcement builds…
Integration between instruments and systems allows manufacturers to align process parameters with business performance As technological advances in instrumentation and control continue to progress, processors are beginning to realize that not only can their process control system keep a watchful…
The New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO, Kawasaki; www.nedo.go.jp) and partners IHI Corp. (Tokyo; www.ihi.co.jp), Kobe University (www.kobe-u.ac.jp) and Neo-Morgan Laboratory Inc. (NML; Kawasaki, all Japan; www.neo-morgan.com) have completed construction on an outdoor test site with 1,500-m2 of…
Chemists from Rice University (Houston; www.rice.edu) are developing an asphalt-based powder that holds 114% of its weight in CO2. The porous material, known as asphalt-porous carbon (A-PC) captures CO2 as it leaves a natural-gas wellhead at room temperature and at…
Praxair Surface Technologies, a division of Praxair, Inc. (Danbury, Conn.; www.praxair.com), has recently introduced a new line of ceramic aluminum coatings that are said to have the same performance as legacy chromium (VI)-containing coatings. The company’s SermeTel CF and SermaLoy…
Atom transfer radical polymerization (ATRP) is a relatively new process to form carbon-carbon bonds of well-defined polymers. Since its discovery in 1995, ATRP has been performed using transition-metal complexes, such as those of copper. This feature has limited the application…
Construction has been completed on a trailer-mounted pilot plant that will produce substitute natural gas (SNG) from the products of biomass gasification (H2, CO2 and CO). Built by researchers from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT; www.kit.edu) as part of…
The Catalyst Div. of BASF (Iselin, N.J.; www.basf.com) has launched PremAir NXT, a next-generation direct ozone reduction (DOR) catalytic coating technology that can help automakers meet new U.S. Tier 3 and California LEV III emissions reduction requirements. When applied to…
The hydrothermal liquefaction of algae has been the subject of many studies because algae exhibit high photosynthetic activity and growth rate compared to other biomass, leading to increased CO2 absorption. The algae can grow in a wide variety of water…