| Porous materials can convert petrol to diesel |
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A new material could solve the shortage of diesel. Through its porous structure of the material has unique properties to convert gasoline directly into diesel.
The material is a aluminosilikat who has been named ITQ-39 and belongs
to the class zeolites. It has been manufactured by a research team in
Valencia and its atomic structure has been determined by a research
group at Stockholm University.
The results were presented in a recent article in Nature Chemistry. The material has proven to be an excellent catalyst to transform gasoline to diesel. It is a process that is becoming increasingly important as the demand for gas increases. The material has been tested in the lab in Valencia and it turned out that it is very good. It has a better ability to convert petrol to diesel than the catalysts available today, says Professor Xiaodong Zou, who led the research group in Stockholm. Interest in the new material is already large. A large oil companies are looking to buy the patent. There is a great need to get new catalysts that can convert more oil into gasoline and diesel, so there is a very large industrial interest. Now we know how the structure of ITQ-39 looks like, now we can modify it to make it even better, says Xiaodong Zou. The material has a porous structure that allows small molecules can pass through it. On his way molecules can react with other molecules and thus form a desired product. ITQ-39 is the most complex zeolitmaterialet detected. Unlike most other crystalline materials are the atomic structure is not perfectly ordered, but it is characterized by a sort of orderly disorder. |
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