The lifetime of steel bearings can be extended by up to eight times by a new synthetic diamond lubricant, according to its developer, NanoLube, Inc. (Lombard, Ill.; www.diamondlube.com). The lubricant consists of 0.1–4-nm diamond spheres that are dispersed in a…
A team from the School of Chemical Sciences and Engineering, at the University of New South Wales (Sydney, Australia; www.unsw.edu.au), has developed a process for the micronization of insulin called Arise (Atomized Rapid Injection for Solvent Extraction). According to BioParticle…
A single-step method to convert cellulosic biomass into aromatic compounds offers a simpler and more environmentally friendly route to the petrochemical feedstocks benzene, toluene and xylenes (BTX), according to a Massachusetts bioenergy startup company seeking to scale up the technique.…
Pilot-scale production of biobased succinic acid from dextrose has been demonstrated by Myriant Technologies (Quincy, Mass., www.myriant.com). The firm expects commercial production by mid-2010. The succinic-acid process follows Myriant’s successful commercialization with partner Purac (Blair, Neb.; www.purac.com) of a biobased…
In June, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agancy (EPA; Washington, D.C.; www.epa.gov) announced the winners of the 2009 Presidential Green Chemistry Challenge Awards. Winners of the Challenge, which promotes R&D of less hazardous alternatives to existing technologies that reduce or eliminate…
Stirling Energy Systems (SES; Phoenix, Ariz.; www.stirlingenergy.com) and Tessera Solar (Houston; www.tesserasolar.com) recently unveiled four, newly designed solar-power collection dishes at Sandia National Laboratories’ National Solar Thermal Test Facility (Albuquerque, N.M.). The refined design of SunCatchers will be used in…
Outotec GmbH (Oberursel, Germany), a 100% daughter company of Outotec Oy (Helsinki, Finland; www.outotec.com) has received a €109-million contract for the design, delivery, construction and commissioning of a new oil-shale processing plant to be built in Narva, Estonia for Eesti…
Uhde GmbH (Dortmund, Germany; www.uhde.biz) is developing a new process for producing lactic acid (LA) — a monomer for making the biodegradable plastic polylactic acid (PLA) — that does not require a distillation step. As a result, savings in steam…
Last month, Malibu GmbH & Co, KG (Bielefeld, Germany; www.malibu-solar.de) started up a thin-film photovoltaic-module fabrication facility that is claimed to be the world’s first to eliminate the use of nitrogen trifluoride (NF3) — a greenhouse gas with a significant…
Last month, Honeywell Process Solutions (HPS; Phoenix, Ariz.; www.honeywell.com/ps) unveiled the process industry’s first redundant wireless system gateway (WSG), connecting the last major gap in the path to wireless process control. WSGs manage data between wireless field instrumentation and a…