R&D news roundup

Research and development on carbon dioxide is rising. As mentioned in my old CO2 post in December, there seem to be a lot of focus on the storage, reduction or new applications for this greenhouse gas.

• Dow Chemical formed a joint venture with power generation technology company Alstom to develop and commercialize amine-based carbon dioxide capture solutions.
• Agribusiness giant Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) is working on a project to capture CO2 from its ethanol plant and inject them deep below the earth.
• UOP has joined the University of Southern California's Loker Hydrocarbon Research Institute in the development of alternative cleaner-burning fuels methanol or dimethyl ether from carbon dioxide.
• Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology developed a strategy to capture, store and recycle carbon dioxide emissions from vehicles (see diagram on the left).
  

Universities worldwide have been really active in stepping up green chemistry developments. Here are some of their recent inventions...

• Green antimicrobial paint from Rice University and the City College of New York. Researchers from both school said they were able to embed antimicrobial silver nanoparticles into vegetable oil-based paints using a low-cost, environment-friendly technique.
• Greener titanium dioxide from the University of Leeds, UK. The researchers developed a simpler, cheaper and greener method of extracting higher yields of TiO2 from mineral ore. The University is partnering with Millenium Inorganic Chemicals to develop the technology on a larger scale.
• Green ethylene by Argonne National Laboratory, which is managed by the University of Chicago. Argonne researchers are working to develop a cheaper and cleaner ethylene production processing using a high-temperature membrane reactor.
  

These projects are still far from being commercialized but it is good to hear the increasing intensity of R&D towards cleaner, cheaper and greener chemical processing and technologies.