A Swell Time For Gels

TECH SPACE

The new gel will be used tp absorb dangerous industrial spills.

by Staff Writers
Paris (AFP) April 29, 2007
Japanese chemists have devised a gel that swells up to 500 times its size when in contact with solvents, an invention hailed as a breakthrough for absorbing dangerous industrial spills. The jelly-like substance is a successor to polyelectrolyte gels, which expand when in contact with water and are best known in nappies, also called diapers.

Polyelectrolyte gels, though, are useless in tackling organic, or carbon-based, solvents.

Their structure typically collapses because of the aggregation of charged atoms in such compounds, the only exceptions being "polar" solvents that are particularly water-loving.

A team led by Kazuki Sada of Kyushu University found a way around these by adding tetra-alkylammonium tetraphenylborate, a substance that attracts less-polar solvents.

The gel has been successfully tested on carbon tetrachloride, toluene, tetrahydrofuran and other common industrial solvents.

Their work is published online on Sunday by the journal Nature Materials.

Source: Agence France-Presse

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TECH SPACE

Patriot Antenna Systems To Commercialise CSIRO MultiBeam Satellite Communications Technology

Canberra, Australia (SPX) Apr 30, 2007
The MultiBeam Antenna is a revolutionary design which is able to access a large number of geostationary satellites with a single reflector antenna instead of requiring one dish per satellite. Chief Scientist of the CSIRO ICT Centre and leader of the team that developed the MultiBeam Antenna, Dr Trevor Bird, says that the technology has been proven at two earth station sites in Europe.

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