Latest News: Technologies
First commercial transport, coal-gasifier contract awarded
A contract for the world’s first commercial transport-gasification facility was awarded to KBR (Houston, www.kbr.com) by Beijing Guoneng Yinghui Clean Energy Engineering Co. for a coal power plant in China’s Guangdong province. The two-phase project will showcase KBR’s transport integrated…
Integrity Software: first to map the automation genome
Last month, PAS, Inc. (Houston; www.pas.com) launched Integrity Automation Genome Software, said to be the world’s first software capable of analyzing assets, functionality and dataflow within and among automation and production systems. Integrity provides a universal framework for aggregating and…
A boost for acetonitrile
Acetonitrile, a byproduct of acrylonitrile production, has been in short supply for about a year because of a dramatic reduction in the demand for acrylonitrile, used in plastics for the manufacture of cars, appliances and electronic goods. A process modification…
Electronic marshalling uproots 35 years of spaghetti wiring practices
Last month, in unveiling the S-Series release of its DeltaV digital automation system, Emerson Process Management (Austin, Tex.; www.emersonprocess.com) introduced electronic marshalling, a new concept in input/output (I/O) configuration that promises to streamline the design and installation of automation systems,…
Scaleup planned for a scale-reducing RO process
Rotec Ltd. (Ashkelon, Israel; http://www.rotec-water.com), a technology-transfer company of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGN; Beer-Sheva, Israel), is developing a new desalination technology that promises to increase the water-recovery rate of reverse osmosis (RO) systems from 75–85% up to 95%.…
November chementator briefs
Process Systems Enterprise Ltd. (PSE; London, U.K.; www.psenterprise.com) is to make new advanced thermodynamic modeling tools for prediction of liquid and gas thermodynamic properties available through its gPROMS process-modeling environment. The technology makes it possible to considerably speed up the…
Dandelion rubber
Scientists at the Fraunhofer Institute for Molecular Biology and Applied Ecology (IME; Aachen, Germany; http://www.ime.fraunhofer.de) have genetically engineered Russian dandelions to make it easier to extract the plant’s milky latex. The scientists identified the enzyme responsible for the rapid polymerization…
This newly commercialized, organic semiconductor is solutions-processible
The first commercially available, pentacene-based, organic semiconductor material is sufficiently soluble to render it amenable to solution-depositing methods, according to 3M (St. Paul, Minn.; http://www.3m.com). The company recently began marketing the product as semiconductor L-20856 (TIPS-pentacene) for low-cost transistors. Substitution…
A photocatalyst moves closer to commercialization
This Fall, Sumitomo Chemical Co. (Tokyo; http://www.sumitomo-chem.co.jp) will begin shipping samples of Ilumio, a new photocatalyst, which is 10 times more effective than existing titanium oxide catalysts for deodorizing and antifouling under weak room light. The company plans to install…
Modular design would shorten construction times for nuclear plants
Small-scale, factory-built nuclear power plants could dramatically reduce construction times and capital costs for nuclear-based power generation. A research team at Sandia National Laboratory (Albuquerque, N.M.; http://www.sandia.gov) is seeking an industry partner to commercialize a modular reactor design developed at…