VanadiumCorp Resource Inc. (Vancouver, B.C., Canada; www.vanadiumcorp.com) has achieved direct and consistent recovery of vanadium electrolyte, vanadium oxides and titanium from vanadiferous titanomagnetite (VTM; vanadium-rich Fe3–xTixO4) using hydroelectricity, from the company’s Lac Dore Vanadium Project in Quebec. The company has…
Engineers at Air Products (Lehigh Valley, Pa.; www.airproducts.com) have commercialized an improved version of the company’s Cleanfire ThruPort oxy-fuel burner for avoiding downtime during repairs and extending the lifetime of air-fuel regenerative furnaces in glass-making plants. The company’s original Cleanfire…
Under mechanical stress, carbon-reinforced epoxy-resin composite materials can experience cracking and de-lamination at the junctures between layers of material, where the composites are resin-rich. Placing vertically aligned carbon nanotubes (VACNTs) into the inter-laminar regions can toughen the composite and prevent…
Researchers from the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST; Thuwal, Saudi Arabia; www.kaust.edu.sa) have developed a metal-organic framework (MOF) material that can regulate the humidity levels within the “window” established by the American Society of Heating, Refrigeration and…
Biofilms in water-treatment systems may harbor problematic bacteria and pathogens since chemical disinfectants typically do not penetrate the biofilm. Now, a new treatment approach developed in the laboratory of Pedro Alvarez at Rice University (Houston; www.rice.edu) could enable the controlled…
Tsukishima Kikai Co. (www.tsk-g.co.jp) and JFE Engineering Corp. (both Tokyo, Japan; www.jfe-eng.co.jp) have demonstrated a process that produces bioethanol from bagasse, a waste product in the production of sugar from sugarcane. With support from NEDO under a four-year, $10-million project,…
Chiyoda Corp. (Yokohama, www.chiyoda-corp.com) has been working on a new naphtha cracking process with the aim of producing more propylene and consuming less energy than existing naphtha thermal-cracking methods. The company has recently developed a new catalyst based on iron-…
Last month, the Precious Metals Chemistry business unit of Umicore AG & Co. KG (Hanau-Wolfgang, Germany; www.pmc.umicore.com) inaugurated its production unit for making trimethylgallium (TMGa) and triethylgallium (TEGa). The new facility uses a new, patented production process to make these…
The Sabatier reaction, in which H2 and CO2 react at temperatures of 300–400°C in the presence of a nickel catalyst, or an alumina-supported ruthenium catalyst, is one way to reduce CO2 into methane. Until now, however, it has been difficult…
Nippon Shokubai Co. (Osaka and Tokyo, Japan; www.shokubai.co.jp) has jointly developed a new process for biomass utilization in collaboration with professor Yuichi Kita at Kobe University (www.kobe-u.ac.jp). The process is highly efficient for decomposing lignocellulose into a group of water-soluble…