US Biotech bonanza
A White House summit in September 2022 advanced US President Biden’s National Biotechnology and Biomanufacturing Initiative (NBBI, see page 12). The Department of Defense will invest $1bn in bioindustrial domestic manufacturing infrastructure over five years. This will support the manufacturing of products important to commercial and defense supply chains, such as critical chemicals.
Green Li refinery
The UK’s first large scale lithium refinery is to be built on Teesside and will supply low-carbon, battery-grade lithium chemicals to help meet growing demand across Europe. Once operational, the plant will have the capacity to supply 50,000t of refined Li annually, meeting up to 6% of Europe’s expected increased lithium demand.
Energy and R&D
The energy crisis continues to cause global disruption, pushing inflation rates across many countries to levels not seen for many years. Governments are scrambling to raise interest rates to stop the rise, however interest rates are a blunt instrument, with limited impact on the cause of the inflation but substantive knock-on effects.
Bacterial motion
Researchers in the US have solved a decades-old mystery about how certain species of bacteria are able to move. Some bacteria push themselves forward by coiling long, threadlike appendages – flagella – into corkscrew shapes that act as makeshift propellers. But how exactly they do this has baffled scientists, because the ‘propellers’ are made of a single protein.
Moxie-gen for Mars
Perseverance touched down on the red planet on 12 February, 2021, carrying with it an experimental device about the size of car battery to make oxygen. Now in September, researchers report that they have successfully run this process on Mars (Sci. Adv., 2022, 8, eabp8636).
Pharma skill shortage
The UK pharmaceutical sector continues to fall short on job applicants with recent data showing a 41% decline in people applying for vacancies between May 2022 and June 2022, threatening the UK’s status as a global pharmaceuticals leader. That’s according to the latest data from the network of job boards, Broadbean Technology.
Strong 3D polymers
A simple way to make light yet strong biocompatible carbon composites of any shape and architecture has been reported by a team at the City University of Hong Kong. The method turns commonly used 3D printable polymers into hybrid carbon microlattices. It could be used to create parts with tailored mechanical properties for applications including coronary stents and bio-implants.
Business digest
The latest business digest for C&I Issue 10 2022 with all the latest mergers and acquisitions in the chemical industry.
Greener ethylene
Used in the synthesis of plastics such as polystyrene, polyethylene and PVC, ethylene has a global market of $230bn. Mostly made by cracking the naphtha fraction of crude oil, ethylene synthesis emits around 862t of CO2e each year. Now, a new electrochemical process claims to slash emissions, capable of turning 6t of CO2 into 1t of ethylene (Cell Rep. Phys. Sci., 2022, doi: 10.1016/j.xcrp.2022.101053).