Energy & Green Tech
Destenie Nock, an assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering and engineering and public policy in Carnegie Mellon University's College of Engineering, has co-authored a study that helps illuminate the future ...
Nov 21, 2022
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Energy & Green Tech
The Biden administration has announced the locations of seven regional manufacturing hubs that will receive a portion of $7 billion in initial funding to help jumpstart a hydrogen industry.
Oct 13, 2023
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4
Energy & Green Tech
The development and utilization of rural biomass energy is an important strategy to reduce the use of fossil fuels and resulting carbon emissions.
Sep 20, 2022
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Energy & Green Tech
Usually, choosing between the lesser of two evils is a dismal decision. But sometimes, it's an opportunity.
May 21, 2019
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Engineering
New research on garbage dumps in 44 sub-Saharan African countries shows that 95% are unregulated. The landfill sites still take in new garbage even when they are filled to capacity. As the waste decomposes, these sites release ...
Dec 11, 2023
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Engineering
Researchers have developed a new gas sensor that is compact and lightweight enough to monitor emissions in ship exhaust from an airborne vehicle. The device uses mid-infrared supercontinuum gas spectrometry to simultaneously ...
Jul 16, 2021
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Energy & Green Tech
It might seem an unlikely partnership, but sewage sludge has a role in a clean energy future.
Oct 11, 2022
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28
Energy & Green Tech
Individual palladium atoms attached to the surface of a catalyst can remove 90% of unburned methane from natural-gas engine exhaust at low temperatures, scientists reported today in the journal Nature Catalysis.
Jul 20, 2023
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10
Energy & Green Tech
As drought settled in over the Pacific Northwest this year, some electric utility managers did something unusual: They looked to California for hydropower.
Aug 8, 2023
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Energy & Green Tech
At one of Europe's largest chemical complexes, German group Covestro is trialing the manufacture of a key product using sugar as a base material instead of oil, as the industry seeks to reduce its carbon footprint.
Mar 10, 2024
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24
Methane is a chemical compound with the molecular formula CH4. It is the simplest alkane, and the principal component of natural gas. Methane's bond angles are 109.5 degrees. Burning methane in the presence of oxygen produces carbon dioxide and water. The relative abundance of methane and its clean burning process makes it an attractive fuel. However, because it is a gas at normal temperature and pressure, methane is difficult to transport from its source. In its natural gas form, it is generally transported in bulk by pipeline or LNG carriers; few countries transport it by truck.
Methane was discovered and isolated by Alessandro Volta between 1776 and 1778 when studying marsh gas from Lake Maggiore.
Methane is a relatively potent greenhouse gas with a high global warming potential of 72 (averaged over 20 years) or 25 (averaged over 100 years). Methane in the atmosphere is eventually oxidized, producing carbon dioxide and water. As a result, methane in the atmosphere has a half life of seven years.
The abundance of methane in the Earth's atmosphere in 1998 was 1745 parts per billion, up from 700 ppb in 1750. Methane can trap about 20 times the heat of CO2. In the same time period, CO2 increased from 278 to 365 parts per million. The radiative forcing effect due to this increase in methane abundance is about one-third of that of the CO2 increase. In addition, there is a large, but unknown, amount of methane in methane clathrates in the ocean floors. The Earth's crust contains huge amounts of methane. Large amounts of methane are produced anaerobically by methanogenesis. Other sources include mud volcanoes, which are connected with deep geological faults, and livestock (primarily cows) from enteric fermentation.
This text uses material from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA
