Spectrum Spring 2000 Research Briefs Cleaner Combustion Prof. Jackie Ying holds a jar of powder she created which allows methane to burn more efficiently at lower temperatures than is possible with conventional catalysts.
Natural gas is used both as a general energy source and as a fuel in many industrial processes.
Selected chemical catalysts could potentially permit the fuel to burn well at lower temperature levels. In a kind of Catch-22, though, most such catalysts start to lose their effectiveness when temperatures rise. And, the natural gas itself tends to produce high pollution. Jackie Ying, associate professor of chemical engineering, is on track to the solution of this problem. Among other things, this structure gives such chemicals much more active surface area than conventional catalysts, thus making them function at lower temperatures.