Warning or camouflage? Pigments can send signals, but also protect against sunlight or other dangers. The small, colour-giving particles are hardly soluble in water or other application media; pigments are mainly added to paints and coatings, plastics and construction materials. In contrast, dyes are used mainly to colour liquids.
As the global Covid-19 pandemic enters its third year, life science innovation is setting new records in the level of investment, activity and scientific progress, in addition to the number and range of new medicines reaching patients around the world. Beyond the ground-breaking contributions to Covid-19 in the form of vaccines and therapeutics, this sector has also succeeded in adapting and re-focusing to a remarkable extent, overcoming the many operational and organisational challenges.
Supplying a fast-growing global population with food, energy and clean water, making the best use of limited natural resources and protecting our climate are among the greatest challenges of our time. Innovations based on chemistry play a pivotal role in overcoming these and it’s certainly worth taking a deeper look.
Economic incentives to support EU companies moving away from hazardous chemicals could stimulate the transition of the market towards sustainability. This is the case that is presented in the latest ChemSec report, Unlock the market – Economic incentives for alternatives to hazardous chemicals.
From 1 July 2024, all rechargeable industrial and EV batteries will require a carbon footprint declaration, which will eventually transition into a mandatory maximum lifecycle carbon footprint threshold.
Medical hydrogels currently dominate hydrogel publicity, patents and research but others will become a larger business 2022 to 2042.* Self-healing and membrane hydrogels turn out to be extremely important for the future. Hydrogels can be tailored to be phase changing, shape memory, toxin and rare metal-grabbing and so much more. The properties can be useful in the new structural electronics and many types of sensors.
Nature has long inspired a range of technologies, like the shape of bullet trains and LED pixels, based on a kingfisher’s beak and the patterning on a butterfly wing, respectively. Now, however, biomimicry is being taken to new heights as natural degradation processes are being supercharged to tackle modern day waste.
Unfortunately, the EU and UK are still lagging behind in under-standing the difference between chemical pesticides and biopesticides, and they treat both types of products similarly.
In the last decade, many chemical process plants have been decommissioned having reached the end of their useful life. Many companies contract out the task to specialist companies. While so much has been written about operational safety and legislated for, decommissioning safety has not received much attention, except in the nuclear field and offshore oil & gas.
The Glasgow Climate Pact agreed at COP26 in November 2021 represents the most ambitious commitment yet to tackling human-caused climate change. Plastics will doubtless play a positive role in facilitating new technologies to meet those commitments.