chemeurope.com News

Heat conduction of complex materials decoded

Fri, 28 Mar 2025 06:32:06 +0100

Using machine learning workflows developed in-house, the researchers were able to establish that heat conduction is much more intricate than previously thought. Findings offer potential for developing specific materials. Complex materials such as organic semiconductors or the microporous metal-organ...

Synthetic fuels and more thanks to machine learning

Fri, 28 Mar 2025 06:32:02 +0100

Turning carbon dioxide into valuable substances: That is the goal of Empa researcher Carlota Bozal-Ginesta. In her research project, she wants to combine machine learning and high-throughput experiments to develop better electrodes for CO2 electrolysis. For this, she has now been awarded the two-yea...

Bio-based polyesters for demanding long-term applications

Fri, 28 Mar 2025 06:32:00 +0100

Current bio-based plastics are limited to short-life applications, such as packaging, as they have insufficient long-term properties. The new project "Bio-based polyesters for demanding long-term applications" by Fraunhofer Institute for Structural Durability and System Reliability LBF aims to impro...

Proton-coupled electron transfer: Deciphered with high pressure

Thu, 27 Mar 2025 06:32:01 +0100

Chemists reveal method for differentiating PCET mechanisms – a key step for steering fundamental energy conversion and redox catalysis processes. Redox reactions form the basis of many fundamental processes of life. Without them, neither cellular respiration nor photosynthesis could take place. Redo...

Oxygen for Mars

Thu, 27 Mar 2025 06:32:00 +0100

To mitigate global climate change, emissions of the primary culprit, carbon dioxide, must be drastically reduced. A newly developed process helps solve this problem: CO2 is directly split electrochemically into carbon and oxygen. As a Chinese research team reports in the journal Angewandte Chemie, o...

Lauda launches 5-year premium warranty

Thu, 27 Mar 2025 01:00:00 +0100

LAUDA DR. R. WOBSER GMBH & CO. KG is underlining its quality promise with an attractive warranty package: from now on, the company will grant a five-year warranty on registered constant temperature equipment. By doing so, LAUDA is emphasizing its high standards and its confidence in its own products...

How a German deep-tech start-up wants to redefine the future of fuel

Wed, 26 Mar 2025 06:32:07 +0100

We are ICODOS - an innovative technology company from Germany that emerged from research at the renowned Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT). Our interdisciplinary team of engineers, scientists and business experts has set itself the task of supporting industry - especially the shipping and chem...

thyssenkrupp Uhde secures landmark contract for GNFC's new nitric acid plant

Wed, 26 Mar 2025 06:32:06 +0100

thyssenkrupp Uhde has been awarded a contract by Gujarat Narmada Valley Fertilizers & Chemicals Ltd (GNFC) for the construction of a nitric acid (WNA - III) plant in Bharuch, Gujarat, India. The scope of work includes licensing, basic engineering, detailed engineering, procurement, construction, com...

Tandem design on electrocatalysts and reactors for electrochemical CO2 reduction

Wed, 26 Mar 2025 06:32:01 +0100

Electrochemical CO2 reduction (ECR) driven by green electricity represents a promising strategy for CO2 mitigation and utilization by producing fuels and chemicals. Tandem strategy based on multifunctional tandem catalysts or cascade reactors enables deep CO2 reduction to high-value multi-carbon pro...

ALTANA achieves double-digit growth in 2024 and invests heavily in the future

Tue, 25 Mar 2025 13:50:59 +0100

The specialty chemicals group ALTANA achieved double-digit growth in the 2024 fiscal year while once again making significant investments in the future. The company increased its sales by 16 percent to 3,169 million euros (previous year: 2,742 million euros). One growth driver was heightened demand ...

World premiere: "Mannheim 001" production plant produces marine fuel from wastewater and electricity

Tue, 25 Mar 2025 08:42:57 +0100

A pioneering innovation from Mannheim is setting new standards in the production of sustainable fuel. In a globally unique plant, sustainable marine fuel is being produced from wastewater and electricity for the first time. Behind it is a consortium consisting of the climate technology start-up ICOD...

Novel Memristors to Overcome AI’s "Catastrophic Forgetting"

Tue, 25 Mar 2025 06:32:08 +0100

They consume extremely little power and behave similarly to brain cells: so-called memristors. Researchers from Jülich, led by Ilia Valov, have now introduced novel memristive components in Nature Communications that offer significant advantages over previous versions: they are more robust, function...

Management changes at hte

Tue, 25 Mar 2025 06:32:07 +0100

After 25 successful years at hte, including 12 years as CEO, Wolfram Stichert will pass the leadership of the company to Markus Bold. The official handover will take place on April 1, 2025. Wolfram Stichert is part of the founding team of hte and was CFO from 2003 to 2012, and CEO since 2013. He is ...

Hy2gen reaches milestone for ammonia project in Canada

Tue, 25 Mar 2025 06:32:05 +0100

Hy2gen Canada Inc., the Canadian subsidiary of global renewable hydrogen producer Hy2gen, has submitted the project notification for the COURANT project, a renewable ammonia production facility, to Quebec's Minister of the Environment. This milestone marks the end of the planning phase. As a next st...

OQ Chemicals to Launch Heptanoic Acid Production in Germany

Mon, 24 Mar 2025 06:32:09 +0100

The global chemical company OQ Chemicals is set to begin dedicated heptanoic acid production in Oberhausen, Germany, in June 2025. This investment in expanding its production capacity is part of the company's strategy to strengthen its carboxylic acid portfolio and enhance supply chain security for ...

The "funky" side of solid-state battery development

Mon, 24 Mar 2025 06:32:03 +0100

Solid-state batteries (SSBs) are considered the next generation of batteries compared to conventional Li-ion batteries. Despite significant research efforts, very few SSBs are market-ready. In recent years, various promising materials have been introduced, but one of the main challenges persists: th...

New Real-time Method for Environmental Monitoring

Mon, 24 Mar 2025 06:32:01 +0100

Detecting microplastics and identifying plant stress at an early stage – this and much more can now be done thanks to a new method based on near-infrared light measurements. It is inexpensive and works in real time. Researchers from Bochum, Duisburg, Karlsruhe and Münster have developed a new method...

Arkema sets up its new headquarters in Paris La Défense

Mon, 24 Mar 2025 01:00:00 +0100

Arkema is setting up its new headquarters in the heart of La Défense, Europe’s largest business district, an ideal location to host its various partners, symbolizing a new milestone in the Group's transformation. Inspired by Arkema's know-how, values, and commitment to CSR, these new premises are de...

New material for efficient separation of Deuterium at elevated Temperatures

Fri, 21 Mar 2025 06:32:04 +0100

A novel porous material capable of separating deuterium (D2) from hydrogen (H2) at a temperature of 120 K has been introduced. Notably, this temperature exceeds the liquefaction point of natural gas, thus facilitating large-scale industrial applications. This advancement presents an attractive pathw...

Just take a photo to determine the chemical composition

Fri, 21 Mar 2025 06:32:02 +0100

Florida State University chemists have created a machine learning tool that can identify the chemical composition of dried salt solutions from an image with 99% accuracy. By using robotics to prepare thousands of samples and artificial intelligence to analyze their data, they created a simple, inexp...

LANXESS significantly increases earnings in fiscal year 2024

Fri, 21 Mar 2025 01:00:00 +0100

In fiscal year 2024, LANXESS significantly increased its earnings despite the difficult global economic situation: EBITDA pre exceptionals climbed by 19.9 percent to EUR 614 million, up from EUR 512 million in the previous year. The company thus confirms the preliminary figures published on January ...

BASF commissions 54-megawatt water electrolyzer

Fri, 21 Mar 2025 01:00:00 +0100

Germany’s largest proton exchange membrane (PEM) electrolyzer has gone into operation at BASF’s Ludwigshafen site. Designed to produce zero-carbon hydrogen, the electrolyzer has a connected load of 54 megawatts and the capacity to supply the main plant with up to one metric ton of this substantial c...

C1 raised €20 million in fresh capital to replace fossil resources in the shipping, aviation and chemical industries

Thu, 20 Mar 2025 08:30:44 +0100

Cleantech company C1 Green Chemicals AG has successfully secured €20 million in fresh capital to bring its groundbreaking green methanol catalysis technology to market. Green methanol can be used to defossilize three key industries: shipping, aviation and carbon-based chemical production. At the sam...

Quantum light source for eco-friendly production of biogas

Thu, 20 Mar 2025 06:32:07 +0100

Much of our waste is far too valuable to simply be incinerated. If it is recycled in a carefully controlled way, not only can thermal energy be generated, but the resulting gas can also be used to produce valuable chemicals - from hydrogen to methane or methanol. However, the gas production process ...

The Circular Economy of Plastics: From Bakery Waste to Curlers with a Care Effect

Thu, 20 Mar 2025 01:00:00 +0100

The circular economy is a key component of a sustainable future. The technology transfer project “TechCirclePolymers” at the Institute for Circular Economy of Bio:Polymers (ibp) at Hof University of Applied Sciences addresses exactly this challenge. The project aims to improve the recycling of plast...

Structure of Supercritical Water Decoded

Wed, 19 Mar 2025 06:32:16 +0100

When exposed to high temperatures and pressure, water enters a state in which liquid and gas can no longer be distinguished. For a long time, there has been controversy about how this looks like on a molecular level. Researchers at Ruhr University Bochum, Germany, have shed light on the structure of...

Lords of the molecular Rings: An Innovative Shortcut to High-Performance Organic Materials

Wed, 19 Mar 2025 06:32:13 +0100

Scientists at the Institute of Organic Chemistry, University of Vienna, have unveiled an innovative approach for synthesizing azaparacyclophanes (APCs), a class of highly advanced ring-shaped molecular structures with immense potential in material science. Their innovative Catalyst-Transfer Macrocyc...

Leadership change at KRAHN Chemie

Wed, 19 Mar 2025 06:32:11 +0100

Effective May 1st, 2025, Martin John will join the management team of KRAHN Chemie Group and take over as CEO on June 1st. The company is part of the internationally active Otto Krahn Group, a family-owned business headquartered in Hamburg.“With Martin John, we have found an experienced and highly c...

Artificial Photosynthesis: Chemists Mimic Plants

Tue, 18 Mar 2025 08:16:25 +0100

Photosynthesis is a marvellous process: plants use it to produce sugar molecules and oxygen from the simple starting materials carbon dioxide and water. They draw the energy they need for this complex process from sunlight. If humans could imitate photosynthesis, it would have many advantages. The f...

Efficiently and Sustainably Killing Bacteria

Tue, 18 Mar 2025 07:52:47 +0100

Harmful microorganisms such as bacteria represent one of the largest threats to human health. Efficient sterilization methods are thus a necessity. In the journal Angewandte Chemie, a research team has now introduced a novel, sustainable, electrocatalytic sterilization method based on electrodes cov...

A toolbox for quantum research

Tue, 18 Mar 2025 07:52:25 +0100

Empa researchers from the nanotech@surfaces laboratory have experimentally recreated another fundamental theoretical model from quantum physics, which goes back to the Nobel Prize laureate Werner Heisenberg. The basis for the successful experiment was a kind of “quantum Lego” made of tiny carbon mol...

OE-A and LOPEC celebrate innovation with the OE-A Competition and Start-up Competition Awards 2025

Tue, 18 Mar 2025 01:00:00 +0100

This year’s OE-A competition was dominated by projects and products that focus on smart living. 20 entrants from around the world submitted their latest visions and products to the OE-A Competition 2025. From smart patches for healthcare applications to hydrogen tanks and new lighting applications: ...

Revolution in lithium mining?

Tue, 18 Mar 2025 01:00:00 +0100

Researchers have developed a new process for sustainable lithium extraction, which could help to address the growing global demand for the metals used in electric vehicle batteries and renewable energy storage. Current ways of getting lithium are bad for the environment and more sustainable approac...

LUMITOS and SPECTARIS present the first digital lab day in May 2025

Mon, 17 Mar 2025 15:04:23 +0100

Following the great success of the virtual battery day, LUMITOS AG is launching a new digital event format for the laboratory industry with the digital lab day. In cooperation with SPECTARIS, the leading industry association for analytics, biotechnology and laboratory technology, the digital lab day...

Data recycling with AI: How new knowledge is created from old information

Mon, 17 Mar 2025 06:32:09 +0100

Excel spreadsheets, PDFs, outdated databases - unstructured data sources are piling up in many companies, making it difficult to access valuable information. Technical specifications, standard documents and historical test reports often contain valuable findings, but remain hidden in inaccessible fo...

Watching electron motion in solids

Mon, 17 Mar 2025 06:32:07 +0100

A spectroscopic method for analysing the extremely fast movements of electrons in solids can now be used much more easily than before thanks to a new approach. Researchers from the University of Oldenburg present the new method in the journal Optica. The team hopes that this will transform multidime...

New “one-pot” technique a breakthrough for material synthesis

Mon, 17 Mar 2025 06:32:04 +0100

Creating battery electrolytes – the component that carries the charged particles back and forth between a battery’s two terminals – has always been a tradeoff. Solid-state inorganic electrolytes move the particles extremely efficiently, but being solid and inorganic means they’re also brittle, hard ...

Self-optimizing catalysts facilitate water-splitting for the green production of hydrogen

Fri, 14 Mar 2025 06:32:06 +0100

Hydrogen is a much-debated option in terms of CO₂-neutral energy production. Electrolyzer units that split water into its constituent oxygen and storable hydrogen are supplied with electricity from renewable resources, mainly generated by wind and solar energy. However, catalysts are necessary to fa...

How can Europe boost its domestic battery production and what policy actions are needed?

Fri, 14 Mar 2025 06:32:05 +0100

A new study by Fraunhofer ISI recently published in Nature Energy explores how domestic battery production in Europe can be expanded and how the European continent can become more independent from other parts of the world. The study derives policy recommendations from modelled scenarios how to stren...

Neutron imaging reveals optimization potential for CO₂ conversion

Fri, 14 Mar 2025 06:32:02 +0100

The environmentally harmful greenhouse gas carbon dioxide, or CO₂ for short, can be converted into valuable chemical products such as carbon monoxide (CO) or ethanol by means of electrochemical reduction – electrolysis. These can be used as raw materials for industry or for the sustainable provision...

Medical infusion bags can release microplastics

Fri, 14 Mar 2025 01:00:00 +0100

Microplastics have been found almost everywhere that scientists have looked for them. Now, according to research published in the ACS partner journal Environment & Health, these bits of plastic — from 1 to 62 micrometers long — are present in the filtered solutions used for medical intravenous (IV) ...

New process to enable the conversion of CO2 into sustainable basic chemicals

Thu, 13 Mar 2025 06:32:04 +0100

The sustainable production of chemical base materials using CO2 as a carbon source is the goal of the "PKat4Chem" project. The project partners involved aim at further developing the process of low-temperature plasma catalysis so that gases produced from biomass can be converted into methanol or eth...

This nanotube has a nose for oxygen

Thu, 13 Mar 2025 06:32:03 +0100

ETH researchers have developed a low-cost sensor made of carbon nanotubes that can selectively, efficiently and reliably measure minute quantities of oxygen in gas mixtures under light. The detector could be widely used in industry, medicine and environmental monitoring. Oxygen is essential for life...

Amino Acid Assists in Recycling Rechargeable Batteries

Thu, 13 Mar 2025 06:32:01 +0100

A new strategy for recycling spent lithium-ion batteries is based on a hydrometallurgical process in neutral solution. This allows for the extraction of lithium and other valuable metals in an environmentally friendly, highly efficient, and inexpensive way, as a Chinese research team reports in the ...

WACKER expects to grow in all business divisions in 2025, despite headwinds

Thu, 13 Mar 2025 01:00:00 +0100

With the presentation of its annual report, Wacker Chemie AG reported that its 2024 sales and earnings fell versus the previous year due to persistently weak market conditions. WACKER’s sales totaled €5.72 billion, 11 percent less than in 2023 (€6.40 billion). This development was driven primarily b...

POWTECH TECHNOPHARM 2025 – the hot spot for processing technology this September

Thu, 13 Mar 2025 01:00:00 +0100

In just over six months from now, POWTECH TECHNOPHARM will relaunch following its scheduled break. From 23 to 25 September 2025, the Nuremberg exhibition grounds will again become the hub where everything revolves around technologies for processing powders, solids and liquids. Visitors can already l...

Complete breakdown of PMMA plastic into its building blocks

Wed, 12 Mar 2025 06:47:16 +0100

Polymer chemists at ETH Zurich have discovered a surprising way to virtually fully break down PMMA plastic – commonly known as acrylic glass – into its monomer building blocks. The process remains unaffected by the presence of additives. Today, plastics recycling is primarily limited to the collecti...

X-ray snapshot: How light bends an active substance

Wed, 12 Mar 2025 06:47:14 +0100

With the help of the world's most powerful X-ray laser, European XFEL, a research team led by Goethe University Frankfurt and the research centre DESY has achieved an important breakthrough: Using the example of the pharmaceutically active substance 2-thiouracil, they applied a long-established imag...

Using batteries to produce hydrogen peroxide from air for industrial applications

Wed, 12 Mar 2025 06:47:13 +0100

Hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) is widely used as a bleach, disinfectant, and oxidising agent, among other things. However, industrial production of H2O2 is expensive and uses a lot of energy owing to the rare and precious metal catalysts used in its production. Researchers at the Indian Institute of Scien...

Rigaku Wins Diana Nyyssonen Memorial Best Paper Award

Wed, 12 Mar 2025 01:00:00 +0100

Rigaku Corporation, a Group company of Rigaku Holdings Corporation has won the Diana Nyyssonen Memorial Best Paper Award (hereinafter “the Award”) with a revolutionary, non-destructive method of discovering defects in 3D flash memory. The inspection and measurement technology (hereinafter “the Techn...