Professor Tetsu Yonezawa at the Materials Science Div. of Hokkaido University (Sapporo; labs.eng.hokudai.ac.jp/labo/limsa/english/), in collaboration with Arios, Inc. (Akishima; www.arios.co.jp) and Suga (Hokuto, all Japan; www.suga.ne.jp), has developed a microwave-assisted device that can continuously generate a plasma under water. In…
Biodiesel fuel is being produced for under $2/gal from product wastes in a process commercialized by Ever Cat Fuels (Anoka, Minn.; www.evercatfuels.com). This is comparable to the cost of diesel fuel obtained from petroleum, says Arlin Gyberg, a co-inventor of the…
As producers continue to develop new applications for nanoparticles, the health, safety and environmental (HSE) hazards associated with these miniscule particles remain uncertain and controversial. To minimize the HSE risks for handling nanoparticles, GEA Niro, (Søborg, Denmark; www.niro.com) has developed…
The cleanup of nuclear waste could be simplified by a process being developed at Northwestern University (Chicago, Ill.; www.northwestern.edu) and Argonne National Laboratory (Argonne, Ill.; www.anl.gov). Nuclear waste consists mainly of non-toxic sodium ions, but this is mixed with a…
An instrument called the Cottonscope, which automatically measures cotton maturity in 25 s, has been developed by CSIRO Cotton Research Unit (Melbourne, Australia; www.csiro.au). The unit’s leader, Stuart Gordon, says the instrument has been used to measure when a crop…
This month, Showa Denko K. K. (Tokyo, Japan; www.sdk.co.jp) will begin marketing its carbon-nanotube (CNT) product, tradenamed VGCF-X. The company produces the CNTs in its new, 400-ton/yr production plant at its Oita facility, and plans to ramp up production to…
Scientists at Carbon Sciences Inc. (Santa Barbara, Calif.; www.carbonsciences.com) have successfully demonstrated a CO2-to-fuel process that proceeds under mild conditions using fluegas emissions as a carbon dioxide source and brackish water as a hydrogen source. The modular, three-step process is…
A hard biomaterial Researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Manufacturing Engineering and Applied Materials Research (IFAM; Bremen, Germany; www.ifam.fraunhofer.de) have developed a granulate form of a biomaterial that may replace titanium used as screws and other hardware in medical applications.…
Steam reforming of methane into hydrogen takes place in catalyst-packed alloy tubes that are heated in a furnace. Up to now, this energy-intensive reaction has used catalyst-impregnated ceramic pellets, which are poured into the tubes. However, these ceramic pellets do…
A research team at Princeton University (Princeton, N.J.; www.princeton.edu) led by Michael McAlpine and Yi Qi has devised a process for integrating nanoscale piezoelectric ribbons into flexible rubbers, enabling development of flexible, energy-harvesting materials. Efficient, flexible energy-conversion materials could be…