Rice-built reactor yields green ammonia and purified water

New reactor system could decarbonize ammonia production, treat nitrate-contaminated water

20-Aug-2024 - Ammonia plays a critical role in sustaining food production for the world’s growing population, but making it accounts for about 2%of global energy consumption and 1.4% of carbon dioxide emissions. Rice University engineers have developed a revolutionary reactor design that could decarbonize ...

Synthetic chemistry approach yields new compounds with potential biomedical applications

The study marks a significant advancement in chemical synthesis techniques, leveraging modern organic chemistry and engineered enzymes

10-May-2024 - Researchers at Rice University have successfully synthesized a group of natural compounds known as fusicoccanes. The molecules, found in various living organisms, exhibit diverse biological activities, including the ability to modulate protein-protein interactions within biological systems. The ...

Nanoparticles make it easier to turn light into solvated electrons

Illuminating study advances ‘green’ reducing agents

20-Jan-2023 - There are many ways to initiate chemical reactions in liquids, but placing free electrons directly into water, ammonia and other liquid solutions is especially attractive for green chemistry becausesolvated electrons are inherently clean, leaving behind no side products after they react. In ...

Lab lights way to simple chemical synthesis

Photochemistry method eases manufacture of drug, chemical precursors

11-Jan-2023 - Inexpensive iron salts are a key to simplifying the manufacture of essential precursors for drugs and other chemicals, according to scientists at Rice University. They’ve refined the process of producing diazides, building-block molecules in the production of drugs and agricultural chemicals. ...

Rusting iron can be its own worst enemy

Simulations show iron catalyzes corrosion in 'inert' carbon dioxide

26-Jan-2022 - Iron that rusts in water theoretically shouldn’t corrode in contact with an “inert”supercritical fluidof carbon dioxide. But it does. The reason has eluded materials scientists to now, but a team at Rice University has a theory that could contribute to new strategies to protect iron from the ...

A new look at 'strange metals'

20-Jan-2020 - For years, a new synthesis method has been developed at TU Wien (Vienna) to unlock the secrets of "strange metals". Now a breakthrough has been achieved. Superconductors allow electrical current to flow without any resistance - but only below a certain critical temperature. Many materials have to ...

More effective catalyst with light

Plasmonic effect allows catalyst to work at lower energy

08-Oct-2018 - Rice University nanoscientists have demonstrated a new catalyst that can convert ammonia into hydrogen fuel at ambient pressure using only light energy, mainly due to a plasmonic effect that makes the catalyst more efficient. A study from Rice's Laboratory for Nanophotonics (LANP) describes the ...

Particles pull last drops of oil from well water

Nanoscale solution to ‘produced water’ problem

17-Aug-2018 - Oil and water tend to separate, but they mix well enough to form stable oil-in-water emulsions in produced water from oil reservoirs to become a problem. Rice University scientists have developed a nanoparticle-based solution that reliably removes more than 99 percent of the emulsified oil that ...

Nearly pure nanotubes from unusual catalyst

30-Jul-2018 - Growing a batch of carbon nanotubes that are all the same may not be as simple as researchers had hoped, according to Rice University scientists. Rice materials theorist Boris Yakobson and his team bucked a theory that when growing nanotubes in a furnace, a catalyst with a specific atomic ...

Sculpting with graphene foam

18-Jun-2018 - Rice University scientists have developed a simple way to produce conductive, three-dimensional objects made of graphene foam. The squishy solids look and feel something like a child's toy but offer new possibilities for energy storage and flexible electronic sensor applications, according to ...