An effort is underway to establish an environmentally friendly supply of rare-earth elements (REEs) from waste streams in the U.S. The project, undertaken by American Resources Corp. (Fishers, Ind.; www.americanresourcescorp.com), is focused on re-positioning assets from the coal industry to…
Conventional propane dehydrogenation (PDH) is an endothermic, equilibrium-limited reaction that requires high temperatures to achieve commercially viable per-pass yields of propylene. Oxidative propane dehydrogenation has the potential to form propylene at much lower temperatures and more selectively by controlling the…
Plant Watch Chevron and Honeywell start up alkylation unit using new ionic-liquids technology April 13, 2021 — Chevron Corp. (San Ramon, Calif.; www.chevron.com) and Honeywell International, Inc. (Charlotte, N.C.; www.honeywell.com) announced the commissioning and startup of the world’s first commercial-scale…
TeselaGen Biotechnology (San Francisco, Calif.; www.teselagen.com) has developed a platform technology that integrates software and services, while taking advantage of artificial intelligence (AI) by applying machine-learning algorithms to reduce the costs and time required for the development of biologically derived…
As digitalization becomes more common and remote operations become necessary, guarding against cybersecurity breaches grows even more critical The hacking of a Florida water plant, which made headlines in February, was a poignant reminder of the dangers posed by breaches…
As application demands evolve, battery materials have gotten more complex, incorporating not only lithium, but higher nickel, manganese and cobalt content, while also including various dopants like aluminum or zirconium and stabilizing coatings. Processing all of these disparate components into…
U.S. Vanadium LLC (Hot Springs, Ark.; www.usvanadium.com) has successfully demonstrated the ability to recycle the liquid electrolyte used in vanadium redox-flow batteries (VRFB), a rapidly growing commercial technology that promises to enable intermittent renewable energy technologies, such as solar and…
Plant Watch Thermo Fisher Scientific plans $600-million bioprocessing expansion March 12, 2021 — Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc. (Waltham, Mass.; www.thermofisher.com) plans to invest more than $600 million in capital investments to expand its bioprocessing production capabilities through 2022. These investments…
A closed-loop, long-duration energy-storage system (diagram) developed by Malta, Inc. (Cambridge, Mass.; www.maltainc.com) could provide a carbon-neutral path to industrial heating. “One of the exciting facets of this technology is that it generates a lot of discharge heat. When we…
Engineering design of a demonstration plant is underway for a process that pyrolyzes natural gas into hydrogen and solid carbon. The process was developed by C-Zero Inc. (Goleta, Calif.; www.czero.energy), a company set up in 2018 to develop and commercialize…