May

4

A New Break Into Carbon Dioxide Capture

May 4, 2012 | 1 Comment

Texas A&M University chemist Hong-Cai “Joe” Zhou in collaboration with Hae-Kwon Jeong and Perla B. Balbuena in the Department of Chemical Engineering, assemble MOF materials with profound potential for cleaner energy across the globe. The building blocks the group specializes in actually are a recently developed, increasingly versatile class of materials known as metal-organic frameworks [...]

Apr

18

Super Enzyme Catalysts May Be Coming

April 18, 2012 | Leave a Comment

Pratul Agarwal leads a team at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory describing in a paper published in The Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters that light of specific wavelengths in an effect called photoactivation can be used to boost an enzyme’s function by as much as 8 to 52 fold – for effect, [...]

Apr

16

High Efficiency Electric Motor Freed of Rare Earth Elements

April 16, 2012 | 2 Comments

Both U.S. and Japanese news services have picked up the announcement that Hitachi has developed a high-efficiency 11 kW (About 14.75 hpe) permanent magnet synchronous motor without using the rare earths neodymium and dysprosium. The announcement has the new 11 kW motor’s efficiency rated at about 93% and running at the highest of the International [...]

Apr

6

Will There Be Enough Copper?

April 6, 2012 | 1 Comment

Global demand for copper is growing rapidly with some of the better studies estimating the world’s demand for copper could exceed supply in as little as six years.  For those looking for electrification of transport and distributed generation this is a major warning sign of what could be ahead. Copper supplies are an issue that [...]

Mar

13

Bit ‘O Gold Makes a Better Fuel Cell

March 13, 2012 | Leave a Comment

Brown University chemists have built a triple-headed metallic nanoparticle that is reported to perform better and last longer than any other nanoparticle catalyst studied in fuel-cell reactions. The study published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society reports the key is adding gold to the catalyst formation process to yield a more uniform crystal [...]

Mar

6

Spider Silk Moves Heat

March 6, 2012 | Leave a Comment

In an astonishing discovery Xinwei Wang, an associate professor of mechanical engineering at Iowa State University found spider silk to be a top quality carrier of heat. Wang said, “This is very surprising because spider silk is organic material. For organic material, this is the highest ever. There are only a few materials higher – [...]

Jan

11

The US May Get its Own Lithium Supply

January 11, 2012 | 1 Comment

A deposit in Nevada has the potential to make the U.S. self sufficient in lithium at a rate supporting building up to one million electric vehicles per year at current use per vehicle. That’s the estimate of Jay Chmelauskas, President of Western Lithium who said in a company press release, “As an electric car owner, [...]

Dec

26

At The Threshold of New Kinds of Chemical Reactions

December 26, 2011 | Leave a Comment

For 84 years chemists have suspected the conservation of angular momentum (CAM) had direct applications in chemistry.  December 22, 2011 saw Michigan State University (MSU) researchers first report that CAM in chemistry is in fact at work and the demonstration offers that scientists can use it to control and predict reactions in general.  This is [...]

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