Month: February 2020

Researchers at the CAS DICP have developed a stainless steel reactor with a palladium composite membrane which allowed ammonia decomposition to hydrogen under long-term stable operation for 2000 h. Combination with an ammonia decomposing Ru/MgO catalyst in a membrane reactor reduced the temperature for complete ammonia decomposition from above 748 K to 673 K at stable operation for 200 h.  CAS news release, February 13, 2020

According to the Ministry of Natural Resources, by the end of 2018 142 seawater desalination projects were completed, with a scale of 1,121,700 tons per day. The largest single unit of the seawater desalination project is 200,000 tons per day. Technology mainly adopts reverse osmosis and multi-stage flash seawater desalination. In the Northern Ocean Economic Zone around Tianjin, Shandong and Hebei, projects focus on large-scale industrial seawater desalination for the electricity and steel industry. In the eastern and southern marine economic zones, there are many private seawater desalination projects on remote islands, mainly distributed in Zhejiang and Guangdong, with 100-ton and 1,000-ton projects. In addition to seawater desalination, seawater used for cooling by the end of 2018 increased to 13,156 million tons. Japan JST China news, February 10, 2020

After 8 month in-orbit-testing, the oceanography satellite co-developed by China and France and launched in October 2018 was now put into service. The satellite acquires high-accuracy remote sensing data with its scatterometer and wave spectrometer, and can conduct high-resolution observations of ocean surface wind fields, which have been applied in monitoring typhoons, hurricanes, and the Arctic and Antarctic sea ice. The observation data will play an important role in global marine environment monitoring, disaster prevention and tackling climate change. Xinhua news release, February 21, 2020

Researchers around WANG Feng from the Bioenergy Chemicals Research Group have developed a photocatalytic decarboxylation procedure to convert long-chain fatty acids to alkanes under mild conditions. They used low-value long-chain fatty acids from a bio-oil refining process and paper industry production. Through catalytic deoxygenation, long-chain alkanes where obtained, which were used to produce diesel and aviation kerosene. At room temperature, low hydrogen pressure (≤0.2 MPa) and UV light, the yield was > 90%. CAS news release, February 20, 2020

Biological pollutants such as algae, or organic pollutants cause pollution of photothermal films in solar-driven water evaporation. They can be removed by high-temperature degradation, resulting in considerable energy consumption. The group around JIANG Heqing at CAS Qingdao Institute of Bio-Energy and Environmental Biotechnology (QIBEBT) has used the catalytic and photothermal properties of cobalt-based perovskite for a multifunctional perovskite oxide porous membrane. In tests using algae and melamine as pollutants, the La0.7Sr0.3CoO3 (LSCO) porous membrane significantly reduced the combustion decomposition temperature of the pollutants attached to it, reducing the energy consumption of the porous membrane during the combustion process. Performance could be almost completely restored after multiple membrane regeneration cycles.  CAS news release, February 19, 2020

According to a press conference of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, China’s think-tank, on February 18, in-vitro experiments with 54 TCM pharmaceuticals and related drugs at a Guangzhou Hospital have shown that 5 among these drugs suppressed Coronavirus infections and had anti-inflammatory effects. They are hoped to complement treatment by Western medicine, at least for mild cases of infection. Japan JST China news, February 19, 2020