[Ultramodern Newtown Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant in Brooklyn, where methane is generated from decomposing waste, photo courtesy of NYC.gov]
Burning methane for fuel and to prevent its release into the atmosphere (where it does more harm than carbon dioxide by a large margin) has always been a good idea, in theory. Practically, methane is stubbornly stable, and catalytic burners have required high heat and substantial materials usage to convert it without losing a significant portion to seepage and the subsequent pollution. This quantum leap in process efficiency stands to make burning methane much more affordable and safe, which means more people will do it and we'll all live in a cleaner world with fewer greenhouse gases. It might mean we see natural gas-powered vehicles sooner as well, since one obstacle to that technology has been catalyzing the methane that is its primary component.
The team that is pioneering this remarkable research includes members of Penn's Department of Chemical and Biomolecular engineering (CBE), as well as colleagues at two universities in Italy and Spain. CBE professor Raymond J. Gorte was the PI on this joint project, the results of which were published last month in an article in Science. The breakthrough in methane catalysis efficiency came not as the result of using new materials per se, but in a novel method of assembly for the two primary ingredients: palladium (a nanotech metal) and cerium oxide. The key was wrapping the ceria around the palladium core via a self-assembling solution process to create a porous protective shell. They then took the "supramolecular structures" and scattered them on a sheet of hydrophobic aluminum. The sheet keeps the molecules from clumping together, which they’re prone to do under heat, and the ceria shell keeps the active metal nanoparticles from degrading as quickly.
[A representation of the newly developed catalyst on an aluminium oxide surface depicts the core-shell structure. Courtesy of University of Pennsylvania]
According to Dr. Gorte (in a Penn news release):
“These techniques are common in the nanotechnology community, but I think it’s a novel approach in making catalyst materials.”
The paper abstract concludes with these results:
Electron microscopy and other structural methods revealed that the Pd [palladium] cores remained isolated even after heating the catalyst to 850°C. Enhanced metal-support interactions [the core-shell structure] led to exceptionally high methane oxidation, with complete conversion below 400°C and outstanding thermal stability under demanding conditions.
Co-authors on this project include Penn doctoral candidate Kevin Bakhmutsky; Italian researchers from the University of Trieste Matteo Cargnello (now a visiting scholar at Penn), Dr. Paolo Fornasiero and Dr. Tiziano Montini; and Spanish researchers from the University of Cadiz José J. Calvino, Juan José Delgado and Juan Carlos Hernández Garrido.
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