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Oleophobic hydrophobic magnetic sponge selectively soaks up oil, sparing water and wildlife

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A Northwestern Engineering-led team has developed a highly porous smart sponge that selectively soaks up oil in water. Currently used solutions include burning the oil, using chemical dispersants to breakdown oil into very small droplets, skimming oil floating on top of water and/or absorbing it with expensive, unrecyclable sorbents.

Water 243
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Researchers split seawater without pre-treatment to produce green hydrogen

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The use of vast amounts of high-purity water for hydrogen production may aggravate the shortage of freshwater resources. This is achieved by introducing a Lewis acid layer (for example, Cr 2 O 3 ) on transition metal oxide catalysts to dynamically split water molecules and capture hydroxyl anions. Resources Guo, J., Zheng, Y.,

Hydrogen 345
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Japan team reports pathway to green ammonia: photocatalytic conversion of nitrogen with water

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Researchers in Japan report that a commercially available TiO 2 with a large number of surface oxygen vacancies, when photo-irradiated by UV light in pure water with nitrogen—successfully produces ammonia (NH 3 ). As a result of this, NH 3 is produced from water and N 2 under ambient conditions by using sunlight as energy source.

Water 170
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UCSC team develops high-performance nanostructured composite catalyst for water-splitting to produce hydrogen

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A low-cost, nanostructured composite material developed by researchers at UC Santa Cruz has shown performance comparable to Pt/C as a catalyst for the electrochemical splitting of water to produce hydrogen. An efficient, low-cost catalyst is essential for realizing the promise of hydrogen as a clean, environmentally friendly fuel. Resources.

Hydrogen 170
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UK researchers use graphite to waterproof perovskite solar cells

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A cheaper, cleaner and more sustainable way of making hydrogen fuel from water using sunlight is closer with new research from the University of Bath’s Centre for Sustainable Chemical Technologies. The Bath team instead used commercially available graphite, which is very cheap and much more sustainable than indium.

Solar 236
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Univ. Houston, Caltech team develops new earth-abundant, cost-effective catalyst for water-splitting

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A team of researchers from the University of Houston and the California Institute of Technology has developed an active and durable earth-abundant transition metal dichalcogenide-based hybrid catalyst for water-splitting that exhibits high hydrogen evolution activity approaching the state-of-the-art platinum catalysts. c,e) Scale bar, 1 μm.

Houston 150
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Sunfire, Fraunhofer, partners launch project to scale alkaline AEM electrolysis

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In addition, AEM technology is characterized by its cheap and non-critical materials—similar to AEL technology. However, commercially available membranes lack sufficient stability in alkaline environments, which have limited the widespread adoption of AEM in electrolysis applications.