Environment

A University at Buffalo–led research team has published research on overcoming traditional limitations for using nickel nanoparticle-based catalysts to turn climate-warming methane emissions into useful commercial products. Methane is a byproduct in many industries, including natural gas and crude oil production, livestock farming, landfilling, and coal mining. The researchers developed an aerosolized process that created catalysts in one step, allowing them to identify the highest-performing catalysts.

Engineers from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, Florida Institute of Technology, and the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory have created ultraviolet (UV) rays-emitting glass that can reduce 98% of biofilm from growing on surfaces in underwater environments. Says lead study author Leila Alidokht, "As UV enters the glass, we scatter the UV from inside of the glass to the outside," using a coating made of light-scattering silica nanoparticles.

Researchers from Rutgers University and Xi'an University of Architecture and Technology in China have found that people walking through a space where a consumer product containing nanoparticles was recently sprayed stirred residual specks off carpet fibers and floor surfaces, projecting them some three to five feet in the air. Gediminas Mainelis, the scientist who led this study, said that while it's still too early to gauge the long-term effects of these particles on people's health, the results are important to contemplate.

Researchers from Oregon State University and Tiangong University in Tianjin, China, have identified a material known as a metal-organic framework that could completely remove and break down the common herbicide glyphosate. Metal-organic frameworks are crystalline, porous materials with tunable structural properties and nanosized pores. The metal-organic framework studied by the researchers is based on scandium and a carboxylate linker.

Engineers at the University of California San Diego have developed an ultra-sensitive sensor made with graphene that can detect extraordinarily low concentrations of lead ions in water. The device achieves a record limit of detection of lead down to the femtomolar range, which is one million times more sensitive than previous sensing technologies. The device consists of a single layer of graphene mounted on a silicon wafer. The researchers enhanced the sensing capabilities of the graphene layer by attaching a linker molecule to its surface. 

In recent years, nanoporous membranes made with graphene, polymers, and silicon have been used successfully for separating gases, desalinating water, and delivering drugs, among other uses. But creating membranes that let all the right molecules pass through while keeping the undesired ones out has proven tricky. Now, researchers at Yale University have found that more distance between pores enabled a greater permeability/selectivity performance. 

Scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory and Columbia University have developed a way to convert carbon dioxide (CO2), a potent greenhouse gas, into carbon nanofibers, materials with a wide range of unique properties and many potential long-term uses. Their strategy uses tandem electrochemical and thermochemical reactions that are run at relatively low temperatures and ambient pressure and could successfully lock carbon away to offset carbon emissions.