Last month, Nano Sun, a water technology start-up founded by a scientist from Nanyang Technological University (NTU; Singapore; www.ntu.edu.sg) launched a 3-D-printing facility to manufacture a new type of water-treatment membrane. Unlike conventional membrane-manufacturing processes, which use acids to make…
TPA from PET bottles A chemical method previously developed for recovering monomers from polyester blend fabrics and textiles has now been adapted for use with waste plastic bottles made from polyethylene terephthalate (PET). The BCD Group (Cincinnati, Ohio; www.bcdinternational.com) developed…
Sunvapor Inc. (Livermore, Calif.; www.sunvapor.net) was awarded a grant from the U.S. Dept. of Energy (DOE; Washington, D.C.; www.energy.gov) last month to scale up its Green Parabolic Trough Collector, a solar thermal technology that cuts construction costs by half compared…
Flexible micro light-emitting diodes (LEDs) — a sub-100-µm light source for red, green and blue light — have become a strong candidate for the next-generation display due to their low power consumption, fast response, and flexibility. The previous micro-LED technology…
Last month, MOL Group (Budapest, Hungary: www.mol.hu) entered into a strategic partnership with Inovacat (Amersfoort, the Netherlands; www.inovacat.com) to further upscale and commercialize Inovacat’s Gasolfin gasoline-to-olefins technology, which converts low-valued gasoline and naphthas into high-value propylene, butylene and BTX (benzene,…
Sustainability, digitalization and flexible production approaches emerged as major themes at the recent Achema 2018 event in Germany Attendees at June’s Achema (www.achema.de) 2018 trade show for the chemical process industries (CPI) received healthy doses of information on products, technologies…
Understanding how to size and select pressure-relief devices is key to ensuring the safety of your facility Pressure-relief and pressure-regulating devices serve the critical purpose of protecting facilities, people and equipment from potentially harmful, even catastrophic overpressure situations. For this…
Agitators play key roles in chemical processing. Their proper operation and maintenance can improve process reliability, leading to reduced downtime and costs Agitators, which are relied upon to dependably and cost-effectively meet production goals, are commonly used throughout the chemical…
Petroleum refineries built in the 1960s and 1970s have trouble dealing with the corrosive effects of modern feedstocks. Continuous monitoring of corrosion can prevent process equipment failures Aging assets that are past their original design life are becoming an increasingly…
When it comes to selecting materials of construction, keep in mind the favorable properties of fluoropolymers for corrosive service Since its commercialization in the mid-1960s, polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) has been used across a variety of chemical process industries (CPI) sectors…