New material shown to more efficiently desalinate water

By 2025, two-thirds of the world's population could experience a freshwater shortage. To tackle this issue, researchers from the University of Notre Dame have identified a new solvent—an ionic liquid—that improves on ...

A chemical embrace from the perfect host

An industrial process that currently consumes vast amounts of energy in petrochemical plants around the globe could be replaced by an alternative process so efficient that it requires no heating or elevated pressure.

New technologies to recycle electronic waste

Our connected consumer society generates a lot of electronic waste, around 50 million tonnes per year worldwide. It is even currently the waste that shows the strongest growth from one year to the next. The value of the raw ...

Subtlety and the selective art of separating lanthanides

Lanthanide elements are essential parts of today's high-tech commodities including flat-screen TVs, cell phones, electric cars, and satellites. While the demand for these elements is high, separating lanthanides from impurities ...

Developing new ways to advance copper production

MIT associate professor of metallurgy Antoine Allanore has received a $1.9 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) to run larger scale tests of a new way ...