"This apparent magic is essentially a simple electrochemical process"

25-Aug-2022

Throughout history, alchemists believed in the existence of the philosopher’s stone: a substance that could turn cheap substances into precious gold. Now scientists from The University of Manchester, Tsinghua University in China and the Chinese Academy of Sciences have shown that graphene can be ...

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25-Jul-2022

Researchers are working on solution for the economical consumption of resources, their recycling and the future recovery of new raw material sources, as well as on an environmentally friendly but still demand-oriented extraction worldwide. The extraction of heavy metals from their ores with the ...

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One process has similar CO2 footprint to e-mobility

02-Nov-2021

Technologies for the removal of carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere (direct air capture, or DAC for short) are already in use, but neither their actual benefits for climate protection nor their other environmental impact have yet to be investigated. A research team led by Kavya Madhu and ...

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Just a single week’s worth of water from hydraulic fracturing in Texas’ Eagle Ford Shale has the potential to produce enough lithium for 300 electric vehicle batteries or 1.7 million smartphones

14-Sep-2021

Anyone using a cellphone, laptop or electric vehicle depends on lithium. The element is in tremendous demand. And although the supply of lithium around the world is plentiful, getting access to it and extracting it remains a challenging and inefficient process. An interdisciplinary team of ...

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01-Apr-2020

An industrial process that currently consumes vast amounts of energy in petrochemical plants around the globe could be replaced by an alternative process so efficient that it requires no heating or elevated pressure. Niveen Khashab from KAUST's Advanced Membranes and Porous Materials Center and ...

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Selective dissolution of elemental gold from multi-metal sources in organic solutions

17-Dec-2018

“Urban mining”, the recycling of precious metals from electronic gadgets, becomes ever more important, although processes that are both efficient and environmentally benign are still scarce. An international team of scientists has now looked deeper into gold dissolution, in particular, how ...

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19-Dec-2017

Human emissions of the potentially harmful trace metal vanadium into Earth's atmosphere have spiked sharply since the start of the 21st century due in large part to industry's growing use of heavy oils, tar sands, bitumen and petroleum coke for energy, a new Duke University study finds. "Human ...

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Getting More From Biomass

19-Oct-2017

Swedish-Finnish company Stora Enso is undergoing a renewable materials transformation. Previously focused on pulp and paper, the company is developing new, innovative products and services based on wood and other non-food competing feedstock. The goal – to replace non-renewable materials and use ...

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Surface polarization in mixed media increases attraction among elements

16-Oct-2017

Despite their name, rare earth elements actually aren't that rare. Abundant in mines around the world, rare earths are used in many high-tech products, including visual displays, batteries, super conductors, and computer hard drives. But while they aren't necessarily tricky to find, the elements ...

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13-Oct-2017

New efficient and inexpensive technologies being developed at Purdue University could allow the extraction of rare earth elements, critical components of many electronics and green products, from waste coal ash. This innovation could enable the U.S. to enter into the $4 billion rare earth element ...

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