Alkali

First, what exactly is a caustic? It's something that causes damage to tissues on contact, meaning burns, essentially, and it can be either acidic or alkaline, as we mentioned.

Alkali exposures, like lye, cause liquefactive necrosis, meaning essentially the cells and the fat inside the cells dissolve, resulting in a gelatinous coagulum, and this allows deeper penetration into subcutaneous tissues and even the muscle, causing deeper burns.

Acid exposures cause coagulative necrosis.

Essentially, it dries out the cells and causes an eschar.

This is Sotirios Vanzanas, Chemical Week's Specialties Editor.

I will be hosting today's episode that will focus on biomanufacturing and the newly launched project by Alkali Labs that aims to develop and validate a scalable microbial process for extracting lithium from produced water.

The project is being funded by Biomade, which is a non-profit public-private partnership with a mission to accelerate the biomanufacturing of chemicals and materials in the U.S., To discuss all this, I'm joined today by the co-founder and CEO of Alkali Labs, Luis Valencia.

Hello, Luis.

Welcome to the podcast.

morning.

It's a pleasure to join you.

So I would like to start by asking Luis, if you can tell us about Alkali Labs vision and the main aims of this new project.

Richard, champion, Winfield, is how the Padres will line up here in the first inning.

Rose playing shallow at third base as Alkali deals a 1-0, and that is on the outside edge for a call strike one.

One and one.

Richard fleet of foot waiting on the next delivery, and an off-speed pitch gets over on the outside corner for a call strike.

So Alkali had one and two as Richard straddles the batter's box, checks with third base coach Joe Amalfitano, and steps back in.

There's a guy who wastes no time getting it up there, and this one swung on and lined foul well back into the blue seat behind the San Diego dugout.

Count holding, ball one, strike two on Padre leadoff batter Gene Richards.

No balls, one strike around home runner at second base Hendricks.

Right.

When a susceptible insect, like a crop-destroying caterpillar, chews on a leaf coated with Bt spores, it ingests those crystals, and the midgut of these specific insect larvae is highly alkaline.

Alkaline, like high pH.

Yes, often with a pH between nine and 12.

And that extreme alkalinity physically dissolves the crystalline structure.