Category Chemistry/Nanotechnology

ESA’s technical heart has begun to produce oxygen out of simulated moondust. A prototype oxygen plant has been set up in the Materials and Electrical Components Laboratory of the European Space Research and Technology Centre, ESTEC, based in Noordwijk in the Netherlands.

“Having our own facility allows us to focus on oxygen production, measuring it with a mass spectrometer as it is extracted from the regolith simulant,” comments Beth Lomax of the University of Glasgow, whose Ph.D. work is being supported through ESA’s Networking and Partnering Initiative, harnessing advanced academic research for space applications.

“Being able to acquire oxygen from resources found on the Moon would obviously be hugely useful for future lunar settlers, both...

Scientists develop a cheap and efficient copper-based catalyst that can be used to convert glycerol, one of the main by-products of the biodiesel industry, into a valuable compound called dihydroxyacetone. In addition, this same process produces hydrogen molecules from water, and these could be used as a clean type of fuel, further highlighting the impact of this research in terms of energy sustainability.

Hydrogen (H2) is a very attractive candidate as a replacement of fossil fuels because it can be produced from water (H...

A long-sought-after class of “superdiamond” carbon-based materials with tunable mechanical and electronic properties was predicted and synthesized by Carnegie’s Li Zhu and Timothy Strobel. Their work is published by Science Advances.

Carbon is the fourth-most-abundant element in the universe and is fundamental to life as we know it. It is unrivaled in its ability to form stable structures, both alone and with other elements.

A material’s properties are determined by how its atoms are bonded and the structural ar...

Imagine having access to a battery, which has the potential to power your phone for five continuous days, or enable an electric vehicle to drive more than 1000km without needing to “refuel”.

Monash University researchers are on the brink of commercialising the world’s most efficient lithium-sulphur (Li-S) battery, which could outperform current market leaders by more than 4X, and power Australia and other global markets well into the future.

Dr...