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…
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…
COVID-19 Response Ineos constructs several new sanitizer plants in Europe April 8, 2020 — Ineos (London) has constructed and begun operations at several hand sanitizer plants around Europe in recent weeks. The most recent plant, located in Etian, France, will…
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…
Today’s steam crackers are bigger than ever — those of tomorrow might be carbon neutral Steam cracking is a key process of the petrochemical industry, whereby naphtha or other petroleum-based feedstock is thermally broken down (cracked) into smaller building-block compounds,…
Improved equipment and controls, as well as continuous mixing, improve efficiency Optimization is imperative for today’s chemical processors who strive to remain competitive by providing higher quality products at lower costs in a more timely fashion. And mixing operations are…
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…