Hiroshi Abe and colleagues at Biochemical Group of Research Institute for Innovation in Sustainable Chemistry, National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (Tsukuba, Japan; www.aist.go.jp) have discovered a strain of acetic-acid bacteria (which normally oxidize ethanol into acetic acid)…
At Achema last month (May 11–15; Frankfurt, Germany), Sulzer Chemtech AG (Winterthur, Switzerland; www.sulzerchemtech.com) launched a new static mixer, the SMX plus. For homogenizing viscous fluid, the new SMX plus has about half the pressure drop of the company’s standard…
The world’s first demonstration plant combining underground coal gasification and gas-to-liquids (GTL) technologies in the same facility was officially opened on April 22 in Chinchilla, 350 km northwest of Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. The plant is operated by Linc Energy Ltd…
Mercury sorbent A palladium-on-alumina sorbent, designed to remove mercury from synthesis gas in coal-gasification plants, has captured more than 98% of the mercury contained in a sour syngas stream in a test conducted by Southern Co. (Atlanta, Ga.; www.southernco.com). The…
The world’s first commercial plant to produce liquid fuels by direct coal liquefaction is now being started up in Majata, Inner Mongolia, by Shenhua Group (Beijing). Designed to produce 25,000 bbl/d of syncrude from 4,300 metric tons per day (m.t./d)…
An innovation that improves the steelmaking efficiency of an electric arc furnace (EAF) by adding calcium carbide to the process has been developed by NuFlux, LLC (Warren, Ohio), a producer of steelmaking fluxes, and Carbide Industries LLC (Louisville, Ky.; www.carbidellc.com),…
Strategies for extracting more distillate from petroleum to meet the growing demand for diesel fuel constituted a major theme of the recent annual meeting of the National Petrochemical and Petroleum Refiners Association (NPRA, Washington D.C.; www.npra.gov) in San Antonio, Tex.…
Cast parts, such as engine blocks, are typically made by pouring molten metal into so-called cores — sand-based molds that have internal passages for the component to be cast. Such casting cores are typically made by reacting sand with organic…
On March 31, U.S. Dept. of Energy (DOE; Washington, D.C.) Secretary Steven Chu announced $6 billion in new funding under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to accelerate environmental cleanup work and create jobs across 12 states. Projects identified for…
SynGest, Inc. (San Francisco, Calif.; www.syngest.com) plans to commercialize a process for the production of ammonia from biomass by the fall of 2011. The first plant, to be located in Menlo, Iowa, will convert 150,000 ton/yr of corncobs into 50,000…