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A novel catalyst technology could dramatically cut the production costs associated with compressed natural gas (CNG).

In the drive to reduce pollution, compressed natural gas (CNG) is becoming an increasingly popular option for transportation fuels. Now a new catalyst-based technology being developed by Oxford Catalysts will make it possible to produce CNG more economically.

Oxford Catalysts Group designs and develops specialty catalysts for the generation of clean fuels from both conventional fossil fuels and certain renewable sources such as biomass.

Its patent-pending technology is the result of almost 20 years of research at the Wolfson Catalysis Centre at the University of Oxford, headed by professor Malcolm Green. The company’s strategy is to license its catalysts for commercial application by entering into co-development partnerships with leading manufacturers, producers and suppliers in the petroleum, petrochemicals, fuel cells, biogas, steam applications and catalysis markets.

To this end, the company has signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Thai state controlled oil and gas company PTT for the development of the new technology. PTT is Thailand’s only fully-integrated oil and gas company, with a leading position in exploration and production, transmission, refining, marketing and trading of petroleum and petrochemical products. Together with its affiliates, the company accounts for approximately 20 per cent of Thailand’s gross domestic product.

The first step in CNG production is to upgrade the natural gas raw material by removing impurities, such as mercury and sulphur. This is typically carried out via chemisorption, a process that removes pollutants by involving them in a chemical reaction.

The efficiency of the chemisorption process depends heavily on the composition of the catalyst, or more precisely, the chemisorbent. Lab-scale tests show a new proprietary chemisorbent from Oxford Catalysts has a greater capacity, or ability to take up more pollutant per unit volume, than existing chemisorbents. The key to the improved performance lies in the chemisorbent composition – the combination of the metals used in the chemisorbent.

The new chemisorbent will be tested by PTT in two commercial side-stream units, one located onshore, and one offshore. An industrial scale field trial is also planned. Meanwhile, Oxford Catalysts is working with a major catalyst company to scale up manufacture of the new catalyst for commercial deployment.

Derek Atkinson, business development director Oxford Catalysts, says: “The trick with developing chemisorbents lies in finding the right combination of metals to react with the pollutants you want to remove. There is a government-mandated need in Thailand to move to cleaner transportation fuels, specifically to the use of CNG. The use of this technology will make it possible to produce clean fuels such as CNG more economically. This, in turn, will help to reduce the environmental problems associated with the use of conventional fuels in crowded Thai cities.”

Chemisorption is a process that relies on a chemical reaction – rather than physical forces – to capture molecules onto the surface of a solid. In chemisorption reactions, the reaction takes place on the surface of a catalyst. When the catalyst surface is saturated, the catalyst is replaced.

The chemisorption catalyst being developed by Oxford Catalysts and tested by PTT is based on the use of a chemisorbent with a novel composition. Mercury and sulphur are pollutants that are present in many natural gas fields, and those in Thailand are no exception. This new chemisorbent has a greater capacity, or ability to take up more pollutants per unit volume, than existing materials, say the two companies.

Oxford Catalysts has two key platform technologies. The first is based on a novel class of catalysts made from metal carbides. Aside from their lower cost, these catalysts offer a number of advantages. For example, in some reactions metal loadings can be reduced. In others, the need for precious metal promoters can be eliminated, while still retaining or even exceeding the benefits of traditional catalysts. Applications of these metal-carbide catalysts include hydroprocessing and the conversion of natural gas, biogas or coal into sulphur-free diesel.

The second involves catalysts that can be used to produce steam at temperatures between 100ºC and 800ºC instantaneously, starting from room temperature, from a liquid fuel containing dilute hydrogen peroxide and either an alcohol, sugar, glycerol, starch or formic acid. Such instant steam could have important applications in a broad range of markets, from cleaning and disinfecting, to green energy in the form of motive power or electricity.

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Are you the type of person who wants to live a better life? Do you have the desire to improve the way you and your family live? Do you think that by being a better person in certain areas, you can be an idol for your kids and those around you? Is that important to you? If the answer is yes, you need to do something. You need to have the desire to grow progressively better and better. But the question is how?

Personally, I want to develop into a better person, a better husband, a better father and a better friend. I’m very grateful to have a good career and family. Those are the most important things for me. But, I also realize that my job (career) is actually to support my family which means to be a better provider for my wife and kids. I want my kids to be successful and I need to ensure the process begins from me. I want and need to be a balanced human being. I want to balance my life between what I need to do and what I want to do. Besides doing some monthly reflections of myself, I realize that I need to have some input to further enhance my inner side quality. I began searching for tapes and CD to stimulate and motivate myself. That’s when I found out about Subliminal Tapes and CD’s Self Improvement website.

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Communication skills are an essential component in every organization. People in organization spend up to 75% of their time communicating with one another; whether it is at the interpersonal, inter-group, intra-group, organizational, or external levels. Poor communication skills can lead to poor public image, misunderstandings, mistakes, loss of productivity and can affect the morale and performance for the company.

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Communication and interpersonal skills is the initial process to possess the ultimate power of influencing people

Getting people to do what you want/need them to do can be the most difficult task faced by leaders, managers, CEOs, or anyone in this situation. How do you influence people successfully? Do you have the skills in influencing them? What type of “secret weapon” do you have? Do you count on the power of your position, or do you believe that good people should not have been told what to do? That’s why, before we move to the next stage which is the ultimate power of influencing people, we need to establish our communication and interpersonal skills.

When I was at my secondary school, I’m very poor in this so called interpersonal skills. I’m even worse when it comes to public speaking or open presentation. However, I trained myself very hard. At university level, I joined few society and practiced tested my capability. Well, it was still very poor. However, 7 years after graduating, I work and had a presentation in front of about 200 students. Without realizing it, I found myself quite comfortable speaking in front of a massive crowd. I’m truly delighted and happy with that. I believe I’m now capable of speaking and giving speech in front of a crowd. I can influence my audience (i think so). It all came from training and believing.

As for conclusion, train yourself. Trust and believe in yourself…

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It was a very mentally tiring day for me after reading the Fluid Mechanics notes - for my lecture preparation next week. I then checked on the internet and stumbled upon this site (from Johns Hopkins Magazine) - Green Ideas, It Might Just Work. There were several very interesting articles but I thing I better share a good one here. The title was Lights Out, Equipment Off. It was basically a research conducted by a group of student to find out why the electricity consumed by their university was too much. Too much power consumptions leads to too much CO2 released to the air. Well, instead of me narrating the story, it’s better for you guys to check out the article (as bellow). Credit to the original author: Siobhan Paganelli, A&S ‘08. Illustrations by Roger Chouinard.

LIGHTS OUT, EQUIPMENT OFF

Kathryn Berndtson, a master of health science candidate in the Bloomberg School of Public Health, recently spent a lot of time trying to answer some questions. How did the school consume enough electricity to be responsible for 25,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions last year? How could so many educated, socially aware faculty, staff, and students be so excessive in their energy consumption?

Her quest began when she and three other Bloomberg students — Julia White, Sean Baird, and Becky Stepnitz — did a case study for a two-semester course combining ethnographic field work and qualitative data analysis. The team was free to choose its subject. The students wanted to do something related to the environment and promoting responsible energy consumption. For her part of the project, Berndtson decided to examine why the Bloomberg School used so much power. Over eight weeks, the team conducted focus groups and interviews, observed lab work, and dug through the school’s archives. Berndtson spoke with lab-science students, staff, and faculty to learn how their habits and perceptions affected their energy use. The results, she hoped, would “offer insight into barriers to energy efficiency.”

Data from focus groups and interviews led her to observe a fundamental conflict between doing science and conserving energy. One major drain, she found, was the electricity used to heat, cool, and light the school’s building 24 hours a day, every day of the year. The school does not set lab hours; students and researchers can come in and work whenever they want. Security staff, too, work round-the-clock. Likewise, many of the lab’s appliances — freezers, baths, insectaries, other lab tools — are always on. Some, like freezers and insectaries, have to run constantly. Others, like the water baths used to heat or cool beakers containing samples, do not but are turned on and off frequently and are rarely unplugged. Berndtson and her group also collected data that suggest the school errs on the side of caution when it categorizes almost all of its trash as biohazard waste, which means a lengthier, energy-consuming disposal process.

Students interviewed knew they weren’t using energy efficiently, says Berndtson, but felt it was a necessary evil, an unavoidable consequence of science. “I don’t think the demand [for 24-hour access] is huge,” one administrator told her, but added that limiting access wasn’t an option. Some experiments require constant attention, and students like having the freedom to work anytime. “You never know when you’re going to use [an appliance],” one student said. “So it might as well be warmed up and ready, because you don’t want to wait. It throws off your whole schedule.” Berndtson found that first-year PhD students preferred to use equipment after hours, when there was no need to compete with post-doctoral fellows. In her report, Berndtson wrote, “Repeatedly, participants stated that convenience was more important to them than saving energy — even if 24-hour access was not always needed to guarantee scientific outcomes, participants enjoyed the flexibility in scheduling that it allowed them.”

Berndtson noted the divergence of attitudes in students’ personal and academic lives. They reported conserving energy at home, but never at the lab. Faculty, too, admitted to conserving less than they could. “We all talk about conservation,” said one professor. “But at the end of a faculty meeting, everyone puts their garbage [including recyclables] right in the trash can.”

In 2007, the Bloomberg School replaced 30,000 incandescent light bulbs with compact fluorescent lamps. That action alone resulted in a 2 percent to 3 percent reduction, equivalent to 890 metric tons of carbon dioxide, according to an unpublished audit by the Bloomberg School’s Center for a Livable Future. But the next steps, says Berndtson, will be much more difficult, requiring behavioral changes by students and faculty.

“We have great aspirations,” said a support services administrator quoted in Berndtson’s report. “But when you start targeting student or faculty time, you need to go for small wins.” Mandating set hours or temperatures in the building, the administrator said, would risk loss of students and faculty who value constant access to labs and other amenities. What’s more, the Bloomberg School accounts for only 7 percent of the total energy consumed by the Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions. This limits its influence on decisions made by the LLC that buys power for JHMI.

Katherine Fritz, adjunct assistant professor in Bloomberg’s Department of International Health, was one of the faculty members guiding the project (the other was Lori Leonard, associate professor in the Department of Health, Behavior, and Society). Fritz says the group’s research could be expanded to collect enough data to influence Hopkins policies. The study, she says, reflects “a burgeoning interest among students in the links between health, public health, and sustainability.” Fritz finds it gratifying to see students making connections between the environment and public health. “We encourage it, for sure,” she says. “But the students are leading the way.”

When she returned from summer travels, Berndtson planned to share the findings with the school’s environmental stewardship committee. She hopes to trigger a new study that would articulate the long-term financial benefits of greater energy efficiency in Bloomberg’s labs. “I think if people actually had those numbers in their hands,” she says, “they might just do something.”

Siobhan Paganelli, A&S ‘08, was Johns Hopkins Magazine’s spring 2008 Corbin Gwaltney Fellow.