Taking a cue from lightning, eco-friendly reactor converts air and water into ammonia

Without any carbon footprint

27-Dec-2024 - There’s a good chance you owe your existence to the Haber-Bosch process. This industrial chemical reaction between hydrogen and nitrogen produces ammonia, the key ingredient to synthetic fertilizers that supply much of the world’s food supply and enabled the population explosion of the last ...

3D printer as a reactor for new materials

Chemist Katharina Ehrmann receives the Dr. Ernst Fehrer Prize

05-Dec-2024 - 3D printers are nothing unusual any more. Today, almost any geometric shape can be designed on a computer and then transformed into real objects using a 3D printer. But Katharina Ehrmann from the Institute of Applied Synthetic Chemistry at TU Wien goes one step further: she can adapt not only the ...

Biohydrogen from Wood Waste

Biotechnological process with a high hydrogen yield

03-Dec-2024 - Up to now, wood waste has had to be disposed of at great expense and, at best, has been used to generate energy in incineration plants. Fraunhofer researchers are now using this valuable resource to produce biohydrogen in the Black Forest region of Germany. In the joint project H2Wood — ...

Water treatment: nanotubes capture steroid hormones

Removal of micropollutants in electrochemical membrane reactor with carbon nanotube membrane

11-Nov-2024 - Supplying people around the world with clean water is one of the major challenges of the present and future. Wastewater contains various micropollutants, i.e. organic and inorganic substances that occur in low concentrations but still have a harmful effect on humans and the environment. ...

Synthesizing fine chemicals: Technological Advance in Production of Pharmaceuticals

04-Oct-2024 - Production of fine chemicals such as those used in pharmaceuticals is typically complex and laborious. An interdisciplinary team of Fraunhofer researchers worked together across different projects to devise a method modeled on a cascade, in which multiple successive stages of synthesis proceed ...

Rice-built reactor yields green ammonia and purified water

New reactor system could decarbonize ammonia production, treat nitrate-contaminated water

20-Aug-2024 - Ammonia plays a critical role in sustaining food production for the world’s growing population, but making it accounts for about 2%of global energy consumption and 1.4% of carbon dioxide emissions. Rice University engineers have developed a revolutionary reactor design that could decarbonize ...

On the way to emission-free mining: extracting metals with microorganisms

Innovative process for the bioleaching of copper, indium and zinc developed

12-Jul-2024 - Microorganisms work in an underground bioreactor and convert ores or residual materials from mining into the valuable metals copper, indium and zinc. Innovative membrane filters then filter the valuable metals from the resulting process water. In a pilot plant of a current mining project near ...

Producing chemicals in an environmentally friendly and energy-saving way: More yield through nanopores

New membrane process increases the efficiency of enzymes - reaction rate significantly improved

22-Apr-2024 - Flow-through reactors packed with enzymes can produce certain chemicals in a gentle and careful way. However, their performance has so far been limited. A research team from the Helmholtz-Zentrum Hereon and RWTH Aachen University has now been able to increase the yield a thousandfold. Using a ...

Converting carbon dioxide into useful chemicals with the help of bacteria and solar power

How electrolysis and fermentation can be combined in one system

08-Apr-2024 - Researchers at BAM have developed a new technology that uses bacteria and solar power to produce useful chemicals from CO2. In the future, this could be used in industry to reduce greenhouse gas emissions instead of releasing them into the atmosphere. Reducing the greenhouse gas CO2 is crucial to ...

New reactor could save millions when making ingredients for plastics and rubber from natural gas

With oil production dropping, a process using natural gas is needed to avert a shortage of a workhorse chemical used for automotive parts, cleaning products and more

29-Mar-2024 - A new way to make an important ingredient for plastics, adhesives, carpet fibers, household cleaners and more from natural gas could reduce manufacturing costs in a post-petroleum economy by millions of dollars, thanks to a new chemical reactor designed by University of Michigan engineers. The ...