atilhan and yavuz have been collaborating since 2008 on the development of new materials for gas capture and separation in the last few years they have been specifically looking more into storing natural gas in novel porous based materials the team focused on swelling mechanisms of network polymers the idea would be to pressurize natural gas on the sorbent so that it would expand and take a lot during consumption (desorption) the swollen polymer would release the gas until it completely deflates this expansion/contraction mechanism also solves certain ang issues as it turns out all the adsorbents warm up when in contact with gas and that causes all kinds of problems not to mention new safety risks atilhan said by having the adsorbent release energy by expanding itself they are solving many issues at once by keeping the adsorbent unheated they get the maximum performance and since thermal management is an absolutely critical design feature in engineering fuel systems they eliminate any unsafe pressure spikes that might come up because the temperature swings and contamination is minimized since the adsorbent remains contracted when no gas is stored with this work we are introducing a new plastic-based material that can store natural gas very effectively said atilhan we broke the world record for natural gas storage and passed well above the target for materials in order to be considered feasible which is determined by us department of energy (doe) yet it has a very cheap production cost which makes it even more attractive to use it in widespread applications to fast forward the feasibility checks on their technology the team began working on real gas cylinders lab results were great but you always have this what-if question when it comes to pushing your technology out in real life said vepa rozyyev the first author of an article they published in nature energy on the research who has since moved from kaist to the university of chicago for a phd he said to test it they went to a gas station and stuck the pressurized nozzle onto a cylinder full of their adsorbent their material beat the top industrial and literature examples by at least 20% it also marked the first time any study ever did this type of field testing the team is excited about the prospects and possibilities that this work will introduce this is just the beginning said yavuz we envision a whole host of new designs and mechanisms based on our concept since natural gas is much cleaner fuel than coal new developments in this realm will help in switching to less polluting fuels atilhan agrees the most important impact of their research is on the environment he said lowering toxic gaseous emissions by using natural gas more than coal or oil will significantly reduce the greenhouse gas emissions that are emitted from various sources we have high aspirations to utilize these materials in vehicular applications which is one of the main causes of global warming it will also help to reduce the operating cost that is spent on acid/sour gas capture operations since we propose to store much cleaner fuel source and replace current state-of-the-art with these materials for fuel storage he said we believe one day we might see vehicles equipped with our materials that are run by a cleaner fuel source natural gas the results of their work were recently published in nature energy in an article titled high-capacity methane storage in flexible alkane-linked porous aromatic network polymers