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Its an interesting material but other than even more amazingly absorbent diapers, or better dessicants, I'm struggling with what the applications are. There are a list of uses for zeolites (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeolite#Uses) which seems that these guys if they can make theirs cheaper and its better could jump into, perhaps I'll be getting a new Brita water purifier "Now with Upsalite!" or something?
Is there a materials scientist in the house that can help me out here?
They list a bunch of uses near the beginning: "reduce the amount of energy needed to control environmental moisture in the electronics and drug formulation industry as well as in hockey rinks and ware houses. It can also be used for collection of toxic waste, chemicals or oil spill and in drug delivery systems, for odor control and sanitation after fire."
I'm a materials scientist, but this isn't my background, so I'm just taking a stab:
These materials have a lot of potential for several reasons: high surface area (many reactions and processes are often rate-limited by surface exposure), surface activity (not sure about metal carbonates, but some metal oxides for example have a photocatalytic effect, where exposing a surface to light can break down compounds adsorbed on the surface), and very fine (and potentially controllable) pore size (with the potential to filter out things on a molecular level -- so it could potentially be tailored for like isolating co2 from a gas stream, water purification, heavy metal uptake).
Just a few guesses.
And of course, since the research came out of a cold country, think of all the applications for hockey rinks! Love that.
Thanks, the adsorbent one seems to be the most practical. I wonder what the cost to produce this stuff is relative to zeolites.
Note that Plos One is not exactly the top journal one would publish such "groundbreaking" research. In general I've found university press releases to be little more than propaganda machines, and unreliable sources that do particularly poorly in providing context.
Saw it yesterday somewhere. Sounds rather impressive. I ordered a sample[1].
I love that this was the result of a mistake, and the brief note about the only available reference material for part of their work being in Russian. Sounds like the makings of an excellent story.
Agreed. Quoth he, "A Thursday afternoon in 2011, we slightly changed the synthesis parameters of the earlier employed unsuccessful attempts, and by mistake left the material in the reaction chamber over the weekend. Back at work on Monday morning we discovered that a rigid gel had formed and after drying this gel we started to get excited, says Johan Goméz de la Torre."
It is in fact slightly disturbing and somehow heartening how many discoveries are the result of mishap.
I originally found this article confusing as "Uppsala" is a way to say "Ohh, oops" in German, along with the discovery being by accident.
Still not entirely sure whether it's a real finding.
In fairness, it's a pretty famous Swedish university.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Uppsala_University_peop...
As a native german speaker, I still think it's mindly confusing the Swedes would name one of their universities that.
There is an entire class of materials called MOFs (metal organic framework) with similar characteristics. This is a highly interesting emerging science.
Does this conduct heat pretty well? I have a couple applications for high surface area high heat conducting materials.
Would this make a good super capacitor?