New technology to detect bitter almonds in real time

02-Feb-2021 - Who hasn't at some point been chewing on an almond and tasted an unpleasant and unexpected aftertaste that has nothing to do with the taste we are used to from one of the most consumed nuts in the world? The culprit has a name: amygdalin, a diglucoside that, when in contact with enzymes present ...

New biodegradable polyurethane foams are developed from wheat straw

21-Jan-2021 - Every year around 734 million tons of wheat straw are produced worldwide, a large amount of waste, which is cheap and has had no well-defined use until now. Recently, the RNM-271 Chemical Engineering and FQM-383 NANOVAL Organic Chemistry research groups at the University of Córdoba have been able ...

AkzoNobel to strengthen paints business with acquisition of Titan in Spain

21-Oct-2020 - AkzoNobel is to further grow in Europe after agreeing to acquire the decorative paints business of Spain’s Industrias Titan S.A.U. Completion is subject to regulatory approvals and expected before the end of Q1, 2021. Titan – which also has a relevant presence in Portugal – is one of Spain’s ...

Cascades with carbon dioxide

Novel catalytic process for converting CO2 into valuable chemical intermediates in the form of cyclic carbonates

10-Sep-2020 - Carbon dioxide (CO2) is not just an undesirable greenhouse gas, it is also an interesting source of raw materials that are valuable and can be recycled sustainably. In the journal Angewandte Chemie, Spanish researchers have now introduced a novel catalytic process for convertingCO2 into valuable ...

Fuel from disused tyres

Research is seeking a solution for used tyres by means of catalytic pyrolysis

10-Aug-2020 - Used tyres pose a serious environmental risk owing to the damage that may be caused when they are stored in the environment. They are emerging in ever greater numbers from one year to the next in developed countries so revalorizing them is a subject that is attracting great interest and is being ...

New depths in infrared nanospectroscopy

Subsurface chemical nanoidentification by nano-FTIR spectroscopy

31-Jul-2020 - Researchers from the Nanooptics Group at CIC nanoGUNE (San Sebastian) demonstrate that nanoscale infrared imaging - which is established as a surface-sensitive technique - can be employed for chemical nanoidentification of materials that are located up to 100 nm below the surface. The results ...

Unraveling the magnetism of a graphene triangular flake

13-May-2020 - Graphene is a diamagnetic material, this is, unable of becoming magnetic. However, a triangular piece of graphene is predicted to be magnetic. This apparent contradiction is a consequence of "magic" shapes in the structure of graphene flakes, which force electrons to "spin" easier in one ...

A new zeolitic catalyst with potential industrial applications in propylene production

The new crystalline material is stable at high temperatures

10-Jul-2019 - Researchers at the Institute of Chemical Technology, a joint centre of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) and the Polytechnic University of Valencia, have developed a new zeolitic catalyst stable at high temperatures that could have industrial applications in the production of ...

Taming defective porous materials for robust and selective heterogeneous catalysis

09-May-2019 - The production of 1-butene via ethylene dimerization is one of the few industrial processes that employs homogeneous catalysis due to their high selectivity--despite the massive amounts of activators and solvents required. Now, a new paper by the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU), in ...

Graphene gives a tremendous boost to future terahertz cameras

17-Apr-2019 - Detecting terahertz (THz) light is extremely useful for two main reasons: Firstly, THz technology is becoming a key element in applications regarding security (such as airport scanners), wireless data communication, and quality control, to mention just a few. However, current THz detectors have ...