Latest News: Technologies
Fast-pyrolysis process recovers valuable materials from tires
Each year, more than 1 billion automobile tires are replaced worldwide. Together, the used tires contain 4.4 million metric tons of valuable products, such as carbon black, metals, fuels and chemicals. In an effort to recover these materials, the University…
Making amine-based CO2 adsorbents more stable
Amine-containing solids have been investigated as promising adsorbents for CO2 capture, but existing amine-containing adsorbents degrade by oxidation, making them unreliable for repeated CO2 adsorption-desorption cycles over a long period. The low stability requires the continuous addition of fresh adsorbents,…
Chementator Briefs
Forward Osmosis Last month, Bioindustrial Innovation Canada (BIC; Sarnia, Ont.; www.bincanada.ca), Forward Water Technologies (FWT; www.forwardwater.com) and GreenCentre Canada (GCC; Kingston, Ont.; www.greencentrecanada.com) announced a private investment into FWT, supporting the commercial scaleup of a proprietary forward-osmosis technology. The initial…
Antifouling membranes for single-step desalination
A filter for water purification that can replace, with a single step, the complex, time-consuming and multi-stage processes currently needed, has been developed by a team from CSIRO Manufacturing (Sydney, Australia; www.csiro.au), led by Dong Han Seo. The team has…
Chementator Briefs
C2H2 hydrogenation Last month, Clariant (Munich, Germany; www.clariant.com) launched OleMax 260, a new selective acetylene-hydrogenation catalyst, which is said to have extremely high ethylene selectivity and operational stability. Specially developed for ethylene producers with “front-end” process configurations, OleMax 260 offers…
A Pt-free electrode for making H2 from water
One of the major obstacles to making hydrogen economically by splitting water is the high cost of noble-metal electrodes. Less expensive, non-noble metals only function as electrocatalysts under alkaline conditions, where the reaction requires more electricity. Now, professor Ryoichi Ito…
This ‘smart’ wallpaper has built-in fire detection
Researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Beijing, China; www.cas.cn), led by professor Ying-Jie Zhu, have reported a “smart” fire-alarm wallpaper prepared using ultralong hydroxyapatite nanowires and graphene oxide thermosensitive sensors. At room temperature, the graphene-oxide sensor is an electrical…
Taking UV/O3 VOC treatment one cleaner step forward
Using ultraviolet (UV) radiation or ozone (or both) to oxidize air pollutants, such as volatile organic compounds (VOCs) is a well-established treatment method in the chemical process industries (CPI). What is not so well known, however, is that for most…
DeNOx catalyst operates at lower temperatures
Professor Toru Murayama at Tokyo Metropolitan University (Tokyo, Japan; www.haruta-masatake.ues.tmu.ac.jp), in collaboration with Chugoku Electric Power Co., Inc., has developed a vanadium oxide catalyst that removes oxides of nitrogen (NOx) from fluegas generated by the combustion of heavy fuel oil…
First bio-based FDME pilot plant opens
The world’s first pilot plant for manufacturing bio-based furan dicarboxylic methyl ester (FDME) began operating last month in Decatur, Ill. A collaboration between DuPont Industrial Biosciences (Wilmington, Del.; www.biosciences.dupont.com) and Archer Daniels Midland Co. (ADM; Chicago, Ill.; www.adm.com), the 60-ton/yr…