Vogelbusch GmbH (Vienna, Austria; www.vogelbusch.com) has developed a patent-pending distributor system that it claims makes possible the adaption of simulated moving bed (SMB) chromatography for use in the pharmaceutical industry. Prior to this, SMB use has been limited to the…
Ehrfeld Mikrotechnik BTS GmbH (EMB), a subsidiary of Bayer Technology Services GmbH (BTS; Leverkusen, Germany; www.bayertechnology.com), has signed a production-and-marketing agreement with Xytel Inc. (Spartanburg, S.C.; www.xytelcorp.com) to introduce microreactor technology in pilot plants for the oil and gas, chemical…
The global market for carbon-capture technologies was worth $88.7 billion in 2007, and is expected to increase to over $236.3 billion by 2012, according to a report published last month by BCC Research (Wellesley, Mass.; www.bccresearch.com). Postcombustion, the absorption of…
On July 11, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA; Washington, D.C.) released an Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPR) soliciting public input on the effects of climate change and the potential ramifications of the Clean Air Act in relation to…
The high salt concentrations, extreme pH values and high temperatures required in biotechnological research on extremophiles and marine organisms cause corrosion in the stainless-steel components of common fermenters. To enable further process development in these areas, Bioengineering AG (Wald, Switzerland;…
A thermochemical process for converting biomass to ethanol, other biofuels and chemical intermediates will be developed jointly by Dow Chemical Co. (Midland, Mich.; www.dow.com) and the U.S. Dept. of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL, Golden, Colo.; www.nrel.gov). Under the…
Last month, Cargill (Minneapolis, Min.; www.cargill.com) broke ground in Chicago on a $22-million manufacturing plant for producing BiOH polyols. Scheduled for startup in November, the facility will be the first world-scale biobased polyols plant; since BiOH polyols were commercialized in…
A process that makes glass by "zapping" the raw materials with a plasma as they fly through the air is being developed by Japanese researchers in a new project led by NEDO (New Energy & Industrial Technology Development Organization; Kawasaki,…
Engineers at MIT (Cambridge, Mass.; www.mit.edu) are developing solar concentrators that have the potential to increase the electrical power output from solar cells by a factor of more than 40. Instead of actually focusing the light, as in systems being…
Optoacoustic gas detection determines gas content via the measurement of acoustic pressure waves that are propagated as a gas is irradiated under an appropriately tuned light. A gaseous-mixture sample passes through a membrane into a measurement cell, which contains an…