Archive for the ‘Environmental’ Category
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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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December 21st, 2009
New Book – Gold Science and Applications
I’m excited to announce that a new book ‘Gold – Science and Applications’ has now been published.
There have been many excellent books written on certain aspects of the science and technology of gold, most notably the book of the Hanau gold conference, held in 1996 (“Gold. Progress in Chemistry, Biochemistry and Technology”, edited by Hubert Schmidbaur and published in 1999) and there are several new books covering specific sectors of gold science e.g. on catalysis, chemistry and nanotechnology (see here). However, for those seeking a broader reference source on gold and covering all technical sectors, the most appropriate book on gold, Gold Usage by Bill Rapson and Theo Groenewald, was published over 30 years ago in 1978. The world of gold has changed considerably since then. A few years ago Chris Corti and I believed it was time for an updated book that reflects the more recent developments.
With the co-operation of some of the leading experts in their field, we have attempted to produce a book that is a worthy successor to ‘Rapson’ and to provide an authoritive source of information. We have attempted to cover all the main scientific areas as well as the main areas of application. In some cases this has required some very detailed scientific chapters; other fields require less specific detail and have focused more on the practical application. In addition, to help readers place this science and technology in the context of a much wider gold market, a chapter on the supply, demand and pricing of gold is included. Taken together, our aim for the book is to appeal to both those working in academia and industry.
If you are interested, your can read more and purchase it here .
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December 7th, 2009
Paying for electronics recycling
Reading The Times on the way to work this morning, I was intrigued by a story (‘Redundant meters offer a harvest of precious metals’) about how Britian’s utility companies are starting to replace gas and electricity meters in people’s homes. This is so that new ‘smart meters’ can be installed.What’s interesting from a gold perspective, is that there are 26 million electricity meters and 21 million gas meters to be replaced and each one contains about 0.01g of gold. So that’s well over £10 million of gold that can be reclaimed from this obsolete eletrical equipment and used to cover the cost of recycling. This is a really important point – not just in this particular example, but in the wider recycling of waste electronics like computers and mobiles phones. The recycling of gold from waste electronic materials is a critical component of the economic driver for recycling. Gold represents 65% of the value of typical PC-circuit board waste and 67% of the value of end-of-life mobile phones (‘Improving metal returns and eco-efficiency in electronics recycling’ Proceedings of the 2006 IEEE International Symposium on Electronics and the Environment). I hope the story in The Times, helps to highlight the unique role gold plays in the electronics recycling industry…..
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December 4th, 2009
Eminent nanoscientist gets top job
Eminent nanoscientist Paul Alivisatos has been appointed director of the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, one of the world’s leading scientific institutions. Professor Alivisatos has published extensively in the field of nanotechnology, focussing much of his ground-breaking research on artificial photosynthesis and photovoltaic technology through the creation of nano-inspired devices. Recent examples of his work can be found here and here.
Congratulations to Professor Alivisatos on this important appointment
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November 11th, 2009
Noble metals and water purification
Richard posted a blog a few months back regarding a paper which had just been published in Gold Bulletin. The authors, from the lab of Professor Pradeep at the Indian Institute of Technology in Madras, described their work in the area of generating clean drinking water using gold nanoparticulate-based filters.
The same group have just published another paper in the field – this time an excellent review article titled noble metal nanoparticles for water purification: a critical review. This paper is well worth a read for anyone with an interest in this rapidly growing area of research, and includes a comprehensive review of the technology developed to date and discussions around the commercial/environmental considerations.
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September 25th, 2009
Measuring mercury with gold
The guys at AZoNanotechnology have recently published a series of thought-leadership articles from leading nanotechnology experts around the world. All of these articles are well worth a read if you get the chance, but one in particular caught my eye…
Professor Suresh Bhargava, Dean of the School of Applied Sciences at RMIT University and leader of the Industrial Chemistry Group, has written a piece on the use of nanotechnology to measure mercury. The World Gold Council is heavily involved in this area, and have recently announced funding of a project in collaboration with Chris Hardacre at the University of Belfast (see a previous blog from Richard on the announcement here). It seems that Professor Bhargava and his team have developed a gold nanoparticle-based sensor, allowing the accurate measurement of mercury. This technology is now being further developed with industrial partners for pilot plant trials…Part of this work has been published in the journal Sensors and Actuators B.
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September 22nd, 2009
Nanostellar wins award
Using their usual criteria judges have been looking at hundreds of companies for the annual GoingGreen 100awards which lists the best emerging greentech companies in categories including Clean Energy, Energy Management, Green Automobiles and Transportation, Green Materials, Green Buildings & Green Nano/Micro-Tech. The awards assess the breakthrough potential of their technologies, market size, impact, etc.
Nanostellar, developer of the NS Gold diesel oxidation catalyst, were one of the winners in this year’s Green Materials category.
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July 16th, 2009
Cleaning drinking water using gold nanoparticles
The new issue of Gold Bulletin describes an innovative approach to remove metal ions from drinking water by researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology. See here.
A novel adsorbent, gold nanoparticles supported on alumina, was developed for the removal of inorganic mercury from water. The observed adsorption capacity for mercury was 4.065 gm per gm of gold nanoparticles, which is ~10 times higher metal adsorption capacity than previously reported adsorbents.
While the authors studied the removal of mercury from drinking water, they also believe the technology can be extended to the extraction of mercury from other sources such as industrial waste water.
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June 4th, 2009
Killing off bugs with gold…….
Silver has received much publicity over its anti-bacterial properties and a myriad of commercial applications are based on these including coatings for catheters and anti-odour socks and clothing. It is well known that gold also has anti-bacterial properties but to date these have not received the same attention. However two items have come to my attention this week that show the future is potentially bright for gold too in this application sector.
Firstly, I note the publication of a new patent, WO 2009/046081 A2, on the 9th April from 3M Inc, titled “Process for limiting the growth of microrgansims”. This is based on their PVD deposition technology used in the manufacture of gold catalysts in applications such as gas masks. In this patent, they deposit fine nanoscale gold of 5nm size or less onto nanoparticulate titanium dioxide by their PVD process to produce a potent antimicrobial material. The resulting material can be effective against a variety of micro-organisms such as bacteria in the presence of other biological material (e.g. protein) and in a variety of different environments and lighting conditions. Photocatalytic activity is also claimed. This process provides a means for disinfecting a surface. Maybe we will learn more of this invention on the 3M stand at GOLD 2009 in Heidelberg next month?
The second item of interest is research carried out at Syracuse University , where Yan-Yeuk Luk, professor of chemistry, and Dacheng Ren, assistant professor of biomedical engineering, have developed a new surface that resists biofilm growth, a development that could lead to improved medical implants and prevention of biofouling. In their research they found that a thin 20nm gold film deposited on a glass slide could be surface treated to produce a surface on which the growth of bacteria could be confined to 2-dimensions. Important differences in the way mammalian cells and bacteria adhere to the surface were discovered too. We shall be following this research up. Watch for more information at a later date.
Richard Holliday
Trevor Keel
Chris Corti
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