Industry separates crude oil, natural gas and chemical mixtures into pure products by means of fractionating distillation columns. This process is energy-intensive, but a new type of column structure ...

Chromatography is a technique that is used for separation of mixtures. The name combines the Greek word chroma, or “color,” with graphein, “to write.” The technique was invented in 1900 by Mikhail ...

Purification of ethylene (C₂H₄), the largest-volume product of the chemical industry, currently involves energy-intensive processes such as chemisorption (CO₂ removal), catalytic hydrogenation (C₂H₂ ...

Vegetable oils derived from soybeans, canola, and other seed crops are already widely used for cooking, to make biodiesel fuel, and as solvents for inks and paints. Chemists could do much more with ...

The word 'pure' is used in chemistry in a different way from its everyday meaning. For example, shops sell cartons labelled as ‘pure' orange juice. The label means that the contents are just orange ...