Many indicators point to current success and prosperity for U.S. petroleum refineries, but simultaneously, the industry is facing a future of massive changes in energy and transportation By many measures, the U.S. petroleum-refining industry is succeeding and prospering. According to…
Coupled with advanced analytics and networking capabilities, today’s smart sensors help processors optimize the facility Picture a piece of equipment not just monitoring its own health, but also automatically ordering the part it requires and, when it notes that the…
Microalgae have been investigated as a source of “bio-crude” — fatty acid molecules (lipids) that can be refined into renewable transportation fuels — but harvesting lipids from the algae cells economically remains the most challenging and energy-intensive step in the…
A catalyst that performs low-temperature reforming of methane with carbon dioxide (dry methane reforming) into synthesis gas (syngas) has been developed by Japanese researchers, led by Hideki Abe at the National Institute for Materials Science (NIMS, Tsukuba City, www.nims.go.jp), in…
A new energy-storage process has begun operations at a large-scale pilot plant in Berlin, Germany. At the combined heat and power (CHP) facility of Swedish energy company Vattenfall, SaltX Technology AB (Hägersten, Sweden; www.saltxtechnology.com) constructed one 0.5-MW/10-MWh energy-storage unit using…
‘Green’ steelmaking Seamlessly following the successful completion of the GrInHy project (Green Industrial Hydrogen via reversible high-temperature electrolysis) in February, the GrInHy2.0 project was launched last month at the Salzgitter Flachstahl GmbH steelworks (Germany; www.salzgitter-flachstahl.de). Together with partners Sunfire GmbH…
At PowTech 2019 this month (Nuremberg, Germany), Glatt Ingenieurtechnik GmbH (Weimar, Germany; www.glatt.com) introduced a waste-free process that recycles the phosphorus from sewage-sludge ash to produce ready-to-use, high-quality fertilizers. The market-ready process fulfills the legal obligation of the German fertilizer…
Plant Watch Asahi Kasei plans LIB separator capacity expansions March 14, 2019 — Asahi Kasei Corp. (Tokyo, Japan; www.asahi-kasei.co.jp) will enhance its manufacturing infrastructure for lithium-ion battery (LIB) separator products at the company’s existing facilities in Moriyama, Japan and North…
Palladium-catalyzed cross-coupling reactions are one of the most powerful and versatile methods to synthesize a wide range of complex functionalized molecules. However, the development of solid-state cross-coupling reactions remains extremely limited. Now, Hajime Itoh, Koji Kubota and colleagues at Hokkaido…
The novel performance characteristics and tunability of quantum dots make them a promising nanomaterial in numerous emerging applications Quantum dots (QDs) represent a broad group of semiconducting nanoparticles that feature a unique combination of optical and electronic properties. For example,…