By Gregory T. Benz Special to The Digest In a previous article (ref 1), it was stated that both pitched blade turbines and hydrofoils could be successfully used to agitate high-solids lignocellulosic materials, but that the hydrofoil could do the job with less power and torque. This article expands on that comment. A little history […]
By Daniel A. Lane and Joel A. Stone, Lee Enterprises Consulting Special to The Digest The US commercial petroleum industry started with the drilling by retired railroad conductor Edwin Drake of a well near Titusville, PA in 1859. Drake’s well sparked an oil boom and over the next couple of years, and US petroleum production […]
By Dr. Bernard Cooker, Chemical Processing Solutions, Consultant with Lee Enterprises Consulting Special to The Digest Cheap, plentiful lignocellulosic biomass (LCB), consisting of cellulose, hemicellulose and lignin, is deconstructed to release useful chemical intermediates in the bioeconomy. These include glucose from cellulose, glucose and other sugars from hemicellulose, and oxygenated benzene derivatives (OBTX) from lignin. […]
By Lorenz Bauer, Ph.D., Lee Enterprises Consulting Special to The Digest Sustainability has become a key concern in polyurethane industry. Reducing the environmental impact of polymers by replacing fossil derived carbon, using more environmental friendly processes and reducing and recycling the carbon used either directly or indirectly is a corporate goal of many producers. The use […]
Is your business model based on government regulations or fuel science? By Bill Brandon, Special to The Digest In light of the recent article on Butamax, I feel a response from the perspective of automakers is appropriate. One of the earlier articles referenced asked “ where’s butanol, or other substitutes for gasoline besides ethanol?” and went […]
by Doug Durante, Executive Director of the Clean Fuels Development Coalition Special to The Digest The recent announcement that the Trump Administration was taking another look at Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards was a welcome reality check for what is a complex and multi-layered issue. There was an immediate knee jerk reaction that this […]
By Gregory T. Benz, Lee Enterprises Consulting Special to The Digest Lignocellulosic slurries at high solids concentrations (10-30%) can be quite viscous. The author has seen some where the viscosity at a shear rate of 1/s is higher than 400,000 cP. Conventional agitator impeller selection guidelines would lead one to use helical ribbon impellers (figure […]
By Gretchen Miller Special to The Digest Meghan Pawlowski crawled through the tall, dense sugarcane jungle, glass vials in hand, searching for her next sample site while she kept her eye out for the scurry of cane spiders. Up to four inches across, these usually harmless creatures are nonetheless an unpleasant one-on-one encounter while tangling in […]
These are excerpts from a complete review of ABLC by Raymond James Senior VP Pavel Molchanov, which you can read here. While the tone (on the whole) is no longer worsening, it is far from being as optimistic as it had been in the early years of this decade. This has little to do with the […]
By Douglas L. Faulkner, “The Cleantech Conservative” Special to The Digest Robert McNally, the author of the new, critically-acclaimed book, “Crude Volatility: The History and the Future of Boom-Bust Oil Prices”, believes that global oil markets are entering an epic, structural shift to a protracted new era of wildly fluctuating crude prices. The reason is […]
