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The demand for industrially produced cellulose nanocrystals (CNCs) has been growing since 2012, when CelluForce Inc. opened its inaugural demonstration plant with a production capacity of 1 tonne per day. Currently, there are 10 industrial CNC producers worldwide, each producing a unique material. Thus, academic researchers and commercial users alike must consider the properties of all available CNCs and carefully select the material which will optimize the performance of their desired application. To support these efforts, this article presents a thorough characterization of four new industrially produced CNCs including sulfated CNCs from NORAM Engineering and Constructors Ltd. (in cooperation with InnoTech Alberta and Alberta-Pacific Forest Industries Inc.) and Melodea Ltd., as well as carboxylated CNCs from Anomera Inc. and Blue Goose Biorefineries Inc. These materials were benchmarked against typical lab-made, sulfated CNCs. While all CNCs were similar in size, shape, crystallinity, and suspension quality, the sulfated CNCs had a higher surface charge density than their carboxylated counterparts, leading to higher colloidal stability. Additionally, significant differences in the rheological profiles of aqueous CNC suspensions, as well as CNC thermal stability and self-assembly behavior, were observed. As such, this article highlights both the subtle and significant differences between five CNC types and acts as a guide for end-users looking to optimize the performance of CNC-based materials.

Japan’s JGC will build a demonstration facility to make ammonia at low temperature and under low pressure. The technology is intended to improve the energy efficiency of hydrogen as a fuel. Ammonia is rich in hydrogen and often used to transport the energetic element over long distances. Developed in collaboration with Japan’s National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science & Technology, the process makes use of a new catalyst to minimize CO2 emissions during production. The demonstration plant in Fukushima will have a production capacity of 20 kg per day.

Standard Lithium has began installing modules for its lithium extraction facility in El Dorado, Arkansas. The demonstration plant for the company’s process will take in 11.4 m3/h of tail brine from...

The engineering firm McDermott has purchased the San Francisco–based start-up Siluria Technologies. Founded in 2008, Siluria develops catalysts for oxidative coupling of methane into ethylene, a process seen as an improvement over the energy-intensive cracking of ethane or naphtha. Siluria raised $45 million in financing in 2016 and signed a licensing deal with Saudi Aramco last year. With the purchase, McDermott gets Siluria’s intellectual property and a demonstration plant that opened in La Porte, Texas, in 2015.

Carbios has raised $16.4 million in a secondary stock offering. The French firm is developing an enzymatic process for breaking down polyethylene terephthalate (PET), used in soft drink bottles, into its raw materials terephthalic acid and ethylene glycol. The company says it will use 75% of the funds to build a demonstration plant for the technology. L’Oreal, which is collaborating with Carbios on PET recycling, participated in the financing, as did Michelin Ventures.

Inventys, a Canadian carbon capture technology firm, has raised $26 million in series C funding from investors, including Husky Energy and Chevron Technology Ventures. Inventys uses a combination of a structured adsorbent and temperature-swing adsorption to capture CO2from industrial facilities. The firm says it will use the funds to complete a 30-metric-ton-per-day demonstration plant in Saskatchewan.

PepsiCo has joined Danone, Nestle Waters, and the biobased polymer firm Origin Materials in the NaturALL Bottle Alliance, a research consortium working to accelerate development of beverage containers made with 100% biobased polyethylene terephthalate (PET). The alliance, formed in 2017, plans to use waste biomass, such as cardboard and sawdust, as feedstocks so as to not compete with food resources. It has selected a site in Sarnia, Ontario, to construct a demonstration plant that can process 18,000 metric tons of biomass per year. The plant is expected to open by 2020 and will initially produce 95% biobased PET. Pepsi rival Coca-Cola is separately working to produce fully biobased PET with p-xylene raw material from partners Virent and Gevo. Coca-Cola is also investing in polyethylene furanoate (PEF), a competing packaging polymer. Notably, Coca-Cola is backing efforts by Synvina, a partnership of BASF and Avantium, to produce the PEF intermediate 2,5-furandicarboxylic acid

The polylactic acid producer NatureWorks has opened a $1 million lab at its Minnetonka, Minn., headquarters devoted to commercializing the fermentation of methane into lactic acid, the firm’s main raw material. NatureWorks currently gets lactic acid via sugar fermentation but says the new process, based on a collaboration with Calysta, could diversify its feedstock base and save money. It wants to build a $50 million demonstration plant within the next six years.

A hub for biobased chemicals firms in Sarnia, Ontario, will grow by two companies working to scale up their manufacturing processes. California-based start-up Origin Materials will build a demonstration facility at the hub to make p-xylene, a precursor for polyethylene terephthalate (PET), from lignocellulosic biomass. Origin earlier partnered with Nestle Waters and Danone to develop 100% biobased PET beverage bottles. Meanwhile, S2G BioChem will build a demonstration plant to make 2,000 metric tons per year of xylitol, propylene glycol, and ethylene glycol from sugar. Xylitol is a sugar alcohol that is used as a low-calorie sweetener. Bioindustrial Innovation Canada will provide undisclosed funding for the S2G project. Both firms expect to construct their facilities in 2018. The Sarnia hub is already home to succinic acid maker BioAmber. Comet Biorefining plans to open a cellulosic dextrose plant there in 2018.

Seeking a springboard to commercialize its fermentation route to isobutyl alcohol, Butamax Advanced Biofuels has purchased Nesika Energy, which operates a corn-based ethanol plant in Scandia, Kan. Butamax, a joint venture between DuPont and BP, plans to convert part of the facility to make isobutyl alcohol. The company hopes to have isobutyl alcohol production in place by 2019. It won’t say what the plant’s capacity will be until it gets further along in the engineering process. Isobutyl alcohol is considered an attractive alternative to ethanol as a gasoline component. It has a higher energy density and is less sensitive to moisture than ethanol. Isobutyl alcohol is also used as a solvent and chemical intermediate. Butamax opened a demonstration plant in Hull, England, at a cost of $50 million in 2010. Four years later, it installed corn processing equipment at Highwater Ethanol’s plant in Lamberton, Minn., but didn’t end up making

The tars from an air-blown pressurized bubbling fluidized bed 90 kW (thermal) pilot biomass gasifier and also from an 18 MW IGCC demonstration plant were analyzed. The accuracy of the sampling method and its advantage/disadvantage was compared with other methods.

Commercial and municipal applications of advanced oxida tion processes have preceded a complete understanding of their chemical mechanisms. Understanding these processes is difficult because of the large number of chemical species and reactions involved. We developed a flexible and extensible, mechanistically based model to aid in understanding these processes. The model allows for multiple chemical species in each phase, multiple chemical reactions among species within each phase, and mass transfer between the gas and aqueous phases. We implemented a specific formulation of this model for the case of ozone−hydrogen peroxide oxidation of trichloroethylene and tetrachloroethylene. This formulation was used to describe data from a full-scale demonstration plant and shown to provide a reasonably accurate representation.

The Ford Administration's top priority program for solving the nation's energy needs—development and commercialization of the liquid-metal fast-breeder reactor (LMFBR)—is coming under increasing fire from Congress and environmentalists. And there is even disagreement within the Administration over how fast the program should proceed. At the center of the controversy is the increasingly expensive proposed Clinch River breeder reactor demonstration plant on which construction is scheduled to begin next year. Congress, after funding the breeder program for decades, now is questioning the need for the costly breeder in view of projected declining energy demands and the potential environmental problems involved in its operations. In March, the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy established an ad hoc subcommittee, under the chairmanship of Rep. Mike McCormack (D.-Wash.), to conduct a thorough review of the breeder program. The subcommittee has held two briefing sessions, and it plans further public hearings and t...