Archive for the ‘Catalysis’ Category
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July 12th, 2010
Faraday discussions: Gold
We are delighted to see that the highly regarded series of ‘Faraday Discussion’ events, organised by the Royal Society of Chemistry, will be running a meeting next year focussing on the ever expanding field of gold catalysis. The event will be held in Cardiff in early July 2011, so make a note in your diaries. We will post updates and more details on this exciting meeting as they are published.
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June 24th, 2010
Catalysis in action
Yesterday evening’s session was superb, with a focus on catalysis. Sean McClure kicked us off with some catalysis simulation studies, and was followed by Peng Chen of Cornell who expertly presented his complex work on single molecule nanocatalysis. Michael Wong of Rice finished off with an excellent tale of catalysis in action – he presented his group’s efforts in utilising palladium on gold to clean up contaminated ground water.
The poster session was just as active as the previous 2 – some nice posters from Raphael Levy, Steven Perrault and Emilie Ringe (who was this evening’s prize winner – congratulations!) amongst others.
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June 18th, 2010
Gordon Research Conference
Next week sees the inaugural Gordon Research Conference on Nobel Metal Nanoparticles take place near Boston. The GRCs are world-renowned for attracting the very best speakers, and this is certainly true of next week’s meeting with keynotes from the likes of Mostafa El-Sayed (Georgia Tech) and Chad Mirkin (Northwestern). Chaired by Terri Odom (Northwestern) and Michael Natan (Oxonica), the event promises to be a key meeting in the field.
The World Gold Council were delighted to be given the opportunity to part-sponsor the event. I will blog every day next week with updates from the meeting
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June 14th, 2010
Best of the web…….
A couple of gold science related stories catching the eye this morning:
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June 7th, 2010
Clear water
This technology has been featured on the blog on a number of times, but it is always good to profile it again…..
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June 3rd, 2010
The age old problem…..
Reducing the costs of platinum catalysts in fuel cells has been a goal of the US Dept of Energy’s research program for years. Its easy to be sceptical of so-called breakthroughs in this challenge, but this news reported on Nanowerk looks pretty promising, with a number of new catalyst formulations including the addition of gold to platinum.
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May 26th, 2010
Less gas for NASCAR
A few weeks ago Trevor Keel highlighted the new commercial applications for gold catalysts in carbon monoxide oxidation, as being reported by Premier Chemicals. Well it seems their successes continue to accumulate. They have been working with NASCAR, the US-based racing industry, on driver safety improvement by using Gold based oxidation catalyst NanAuCat™ to improve air quality.Most people know carbon monoxide is a dangerous substance and in the NASCAR sport there is a build up of this material during races which in turn is taken into the car by the air conditioning system. The same air is then delivered to the drivers via there air fed system into the helmet. NASCAR recognised this issue a long time ago and advised the teams of the problem, the teams in turn went out and developed systems to limit the gas being delivered to the drivers.
Premier Chemicals Limited were contacted to look at this problem with their new gold based oxidation catalyst NanAuCat™ as an alternative to current systems, with a view to improving performance and reducing costs. NanAuCat™ is a gold based oxidation catalyst on titanium dioxide carrier deposited on an amorphous carbon support. It demonstrates extremely high activity in converting carbon monoxide to the less harmful carbon dioxide. The real advantage comes now as the teams can design much lighter and substantially more efficient catalyst filters using NanAuCat™ giving the drivers increased protection from the dangers of poisoning. In recent tests conducted in this application NanAuCat™ catalyst showed conversion efficiencies of more than 99% at high air flow rates. No current carbon monoxide removal catalysts employed in this application gets close to these efficiencies without using a significantly higher quantity of catalyst.
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May 24th, 2010
Chemistry & Industry article
Recently we were asked to contribute a brief feature article to Chemistry & Industry, the publication of The Society of Chemical Industry (SCI). The article, focusing on gold catalysis, has just been published and is available to read here. -
May 4th, 2010
Gold-decorated carbon nanotubes
Two of the most commonly discussed nanomaterials are gold nanoparticles and carbon nanotubes (CNTs). In this review, written by Kurt Geckeler of the Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology in South Korea, potential applications of a combination of these two materials are discussed. The paper details how the attachment of metal nanoparticles to carbon nanotubes is new way to obtain novel hybrid materials with interesting properties for various applications such as catalysts and gas sensors as well as electronic and magnetic devices.
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April 21st, 2010
Premier Chemicals developing new markets for NanAuCat
In July last year, UK-based Premier Chemicals announced they had agreed an exclusive tie-up with 3M to market their new gold catalyst under the brand name NanAuCat. The company have since been working hard to both meet demand for the catalyst from established markets, and to uncover potential new markets through various R&D activities.It seems that these activities are paying off. It’s great to see new press releases like this on Premier’s website. The article details how NanAuCat is being used as a CO oxidation catalyst in the gas analysers of Signal Group to help enable the accurate monitoring of greenhouse gas emissions.
For more details of NanAuCat, check out the brochure here.
Trevor Keel
Richard Holliday
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