Lithium is a key raw material for batteries that power electric vehicles, portable electronics and more, but traditional methods for obtaining it are plagued by poor lithium recovery (a large portion of Li is lost in the recovery process), slow…
Demand for refined products has dropped sharply, challenging petroleum refineries with compressed margins, but a deal was struck on global production cuts The large-scale shutdown of economic activity related to the global pandemic response has caused demand for refined petroleum…
Wearable technologies help chemical processors improve productivity and safety of workers Wearable technologies — cameras, tablets and other devices loaded with applications (apps) and software that can be attached to the body or personal protective equipment (PPE) — are catching…
Light-emitting Si Researchers from Eindhoven University of Technology (TUE; the Netherlands; www.tue.nl) have developed an alloy with silicon that can emit light. Together with researchers from the universities of Jena, Linz and Munich, the researchers combined silicon and germanium in…
Chemetry Corp. (Moss Landing, Calif.; www.chemetrycorp.com) is piloting a hybrid electrochemical-catalysis process for making propylene oxide (PO) that eliminates some of the major production hurdles associated with chlorohydrin-based PO production. “The traditional chlorohydrin process produces about 47 tons of wastewater…
A new electrochemical process could make triphenylphosphine (TPP) — an important reagent in many organic transformations — more practical for industrial use. Synthesizing TPP results in large volumes of waste in the form of triphenylphosphine oxide (TPPO), which is very…
Li2CO3 from brine Purities of greater than 99.9% for battery-quality lithium carbonate have been achieved using a proprietary artificial-intelligence-powered crystallization technology developed by Standard Lithium Ltd. (Vancouver, B.C.; www.standardlithium.com). The total cation contaminant levels were reduced from nearly 2,500 parts…
Anellotech (Pearl River, N.Y.; www.anellotech.com) recently announced a successful laboratory demonstration of a process to convert mixed plastic waste into a host of useful starting materials for new plastics. The process (diagram), known as Plas-T-Cat, would take place in a…
An international team, led by Mahdokht Shaibani from Monash University (Melbourne, Australia; www.monash.edu), has developed an ultra-high capacity lithium-sulfur battery with better performance and lower environmental impact than current Li-ion batteries. The team includes people from Monash University, University of…
Everactive (Charlottesville, Va.; www.everactive.com) has just launched its Machine Health Monitor (MHM) product for batteryless vibration and temperature sensing of process machinery (photo). The MHM harvests waste energy from small temperature differentials (10°F or greater) and ambient light (100 lux…