Solvay S.A. (Brussels, Belgium; www.solvay.com) has decided to increase the production capacity for peroxide-curable (PC) fluoroelastomers, commercialized under the trademark Tecnoflon, in the Solvay Solexis plant at Spinetta Marengo, Italy. Solvay is investing €10 million in the capacity increase, which is…
An enhanced reactor technology that boosts the speed of producing bioethanol by a factor of four while decreasing production costs by 25% compared to a stirred batch fermenter has been developed by IHI Corp. (IHI; Tokyo; www.ihi.co.jp). The technology features…
Professor Kazuaki Ishihara and colleagues at Nagoya University (Nagoya, Japan;www.nubio.nagoya-u.ac.jp/indexe.HTM) has discovered an efficient, chiral, salt-based hypervalent iodine catalyst that could replace toxic metal catalysts without generating the waste or explosion risks associated with hypervalent organo-iodine complexes. The researchers took…
Photovoltaic cells typically operate at 20% efficiency in converting solar energy to electricity. A new system that could boost the efficiency to as much as 60% by combining the light and heat of solar radiation is being developed at Stanford…
A metal membrane system developed by Eltron Research and Development (Boulder, Colo., www.eltronresearch.com) separates hydrogen from mixed-gas feed streams that result from gasification, steam reforming and petrochemical processes. Based on a proprietary, dense metal alloy with hydrogen permeability that is…
Roughly 80% of the heavy oil in Alberta’s oil sands is too deep for open-pit mining, the most common production method at present. Consequently, this oil will have to be recovered by in situ methods, such as steam-assisted gravity drainage…
TNO (Delft; www.tno.nl) and Ingrepro Renewables B.V. (Borculo, both the Netherlands; www.ingrepro.nl) have started a joint-research project to extract food ingredients from algae. Proteins, which account for up to 60 wt.% of algae, could serve as a sustainable alternative to…
Professor George John and graduate student Swapnil Jadhav at the City College of New York (www.ccny.cuny.edu) are lead authors of a paper on a class of compounds, known as phase-selective gelators, that can selectively solidify an oil phase in water.…
Worlds largest PDH unit Lummus Technology (Bloomfield, N.J.), a CB&I company (The Woodlands, Tex.; www.cbi.com), has been awarded a contract by Tianjin Bohua Petrochemical Co. for the license and engineering design of a grassroots propane dehydrogenation (PDH) unit to…
Dow Corning considers biomass plant to produce steam and electricity August 20, 2010 — Dow Corning’s (Midland, Mich.; www.dowcorning.com) Midland manufacturing site is considering the installation of a biomass-powered energy facility to provide a renewable, reliable and cost-effective supply of…