Oxysulfide semiconductors have narrow bandgaps — a property that makes them suitable photocatalysts for water splitting under irradiation with visible light (640 nm wavelength). That’s because the electronegative sulfide ions negatively shift the valence band edges of the corresponding oxides.…
Many countries are now making rapid advances in hydrogen energy technologies and strategy, and the rest of the world has much to learn from their experience, according to a new report — Advancing Hydrogen — compiled by a team from…
Microplastics — a subgroup of plastics with an effective diameter less than 5 mm — are ubiquitous pollutants. They adsorb organic and metal pollutants that are ingested by aquatic organisms, and accumulated all the way up the food chain. Using…
An international team, including staff from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (Kaist; Daejeon, South Korea; www.kaist.ac.kr), led by Kaist’s professor Jeung Ku Kang, has developed a technology to analyze the gas adsorption behavior of molecules of each…
Solar desalination Researchers at Rice University (Houston, Tex.; www.rice.edu) working on nanophotonics-enabled solar membrane distillation (NESMD) have found that concentrating sunlight on small areas of the desalination membrane leads to a non-linear improvement in performance in vapor pressure, which forces…
A modular, fuel-cell-like assembly featuring specially developed microbial communities is capable of producing pure hydrogen from a wide range of organic wastes. Developed by startup company Electro-Active Technologies (Oak Ridge, Tenn.; https://electroactive.tech), the microbial electrolysis system is now in the…
An international group of scientists has created a bowl-shaped electrode that can efficiently convert CO2 into carbon-based fuels and chemicals. The group includes scientists from the University of Bath (Bath, UK; www.bath.ac,uk), Fudan University (Shanghai, China; www.fudan.edu.cn), and the Shanghai…
The use of direct reduced iron (DRI; sponge iron) and hot briquetted iron (HBI) is expected to continue to grow due to the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and the growing number of electric arc furnaces (EAFs) in service…
Conventional plastics are difficult to recycle because end-of-life processing generally is either energy-intensive or alters the physical properties of the materials. A team of researchers from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley, Calif.; www.lbl.gov) and the University of California at…
Chemists from the research group of Stefania Grecea at the University of Amsterdam’s (UvA; the Netherlands; www.uva.nl) Research Priority Sustainable Chemistry have devised a way to enhance the practical performance of metal-organic frameworks (MOFs). By using leaves from the black…