Noah Tech Blog

The global adhesives market is one of the fastest-growing segments of commercial chemistry. Valued at over $50 billion and expected to grow to over $63 billion by 2021, the market is changing rapidly. Chemists are racing to develop the next generation of safer, smarter, more sustainable adhesives for use in industries like automotive and medical.

These three chemical advancements could be the mark of what’s next in the non-toxic adhesive space.

Rare earth elements are commonly used in fields like medicine, science, and manufacturing. While they’re not always “rare,” they are typically highly dispersed in nature and difficult to extract. They tend to stick together, and usually occur in the same ore deposits as lanthanides.

What new uses are being found for these seventeen elements, and more specifically, rare earth metals and salts? Noah Technologies has been watching the following three developments closely.

Zirconium hydroxide is an extremely versatile compound. Not only is Zr(OH)₄ used in chemical research, it’s also a critical component in many commercial production processes, chemical refining, and even pollution control.

Here are three of the most unusual uses for zirconium hydroxide:

Questions are swirling around whether or not the Environmental Protection Agency is in danger. Will the EPA change drastically over the course of the next few years, or could the agency even cease to exist?

By now you know that a new presidential administration is currently managing the U.S. government, and few things have the potential to impact the near future of chemical research as drastically as new governmental regulations and priorities.

Innovation in the materials science sector is anything but slow. In fact, it’s arguably one of the most exciting areas of modern chemistry, responsible for much of the technological advancement and textile development we know today.

Catalysis is inarguably one of the most important components of the global chemicals industry. Some estimates suggest it’s intrinsically linked to as much as 40% of the world’s GDP and is particularly relevant in fields like agriculture, medicine, and pharmaceuticals.

Things are looking bright for the chemical manufacturing sector in 2017 and beyond. With questions swirling in 2016 about the impact of Brexit on global chemicals and specific challenges facing the industrial chemicals sector, key trends in the manufacturing sector are beginning to emerge.

Cyanide has been used in the mining industry in some iteration since all the way back in the 1880s.

The Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 2016 was recently awarded to a trio of researchers, Jean-Pierre Sauvage of the University of Strasbourg, France; Sir J. Fraser Stoddart of Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA; and Bernard L. Feringa of the University of Groningen, the Netherlands. They’ve all been working on something that’s said to be on track to revolutionize the very way we build things within 25-30 years: molecular machines.