University researchers from two continents have engineered an efficient and environmentally friendly catalyst for the production of molecular hydrogen (H2), a compound used extensively in modern industry to manufacture fertiliser and refine crude oil into gasoline. Although hydrogen is abundant element, it is generally not found as the pure gas H2 but is generally bound to oxygen in water (H2O) or to carbon in methane (CH4), the primary component in natural gas. At present, ...

  The Norwegian project entitled 'Modelling-assisted Innovation for the Aluminium DC Casting Process' (MINAC) has developed modelling tools that show the impact of even minute adjustments to the casting process on casthouse products. The aluminium industry is facing three challenges in particular: increasingly complex products, demanding customers and ever more stringent recirculation and recycling requirements. This means that the industry is in need of a predictable and reliable ...

  In future, it will be much easier to produce some active pharmaceutical substances and chemical compounds than has been the case to date. Now, an international team of researchers have immobilised various catalysts on nylon in a very simple way. Catalysts mediate between the reagents in a chemical reaction and control the process leading to the desired end product. When textile material is used as a support for the chemical auxiliaries, the reaction can proceed on a large surface – ...

  Author: Ayodele Ajani, process design engineer, Prochem Engineering As the saying goes, 'A good friend remembers what we were and sees what we can be.' If only I had known that out of all the friends I met in college – such as Bernoulli, Coulson & Richardson, and Reynolds & Newton – that the most valuable of them all would be Dr Patricia Kieran, senior lecturer in UCD’s School of Chemical and Bioprocess Engineering, I would have paid more attention to her and made her my best ...

  Blowing bubbles in the backyard is one thing, but it is quite another when searching for oil. That distinction is at the root of new research by engineers at Rice University in Houston, Texas, who describe in greater detail than ever precisely how those bubbles form, evolve and act. A new study led by chemical and biomolecular engineer Sibani Lisa Biswal and published in the journal Soft Matter describes two previously unknown ways that bubbles form in foam. [login ...

  The quest to harness hydrogen as the clean-burning fuel of the future demands the perfect catalysts — nanoscale machines that enhance chemical reactions. Scientists and chemical engineers must tweak atomic structures to achieve an optimum balance of reactivity, durability and industrial-scale synthesis. In an emerging catalysis frontier, researchers also seek nanoparticles tolerant to carbon monoxide, a poisoning impurity in hydrogen derived from natural gas. This impure fuel – 40 ...