Johnson Matthey Technology Review - Volume 64, Issue 2, 2020

Portable electronic devices, electric vehicles and stationary energy storage applications, which encourage carbon-neutral energy alternatives, are driving demand for batteries that have concurrently higher energy densities, faster charging rates, safer operation and lower prices. These demands can no longer be met by incrementally improving existing technologies but require the discovery of new materials with excepti Read More

Waste biomass, a renewable resource, is a reasonable choice for green clean power generation using advanced thermal treatment technologies such as gasification. In this research, dried-densified olive pomace residues from olive oil production have been applied as biomass feedstock in a new gasification process for synthesis gas (syngas) generation using a 500 kg h−1 throughput capacity autothermal modified updraft ga Read More

The work presented here introduces the topic of plasma catalysis through selected work in scientific literature and commercial applications, as well as identifying some of the key challenges faced when attempting to utilise non-thermal atmospheric plasma catalysis across multidisciplinary boundaries including those of physics, chemistry and electrical engineering. Plasma can be generated by different methods at many ene Read More

The adsorption and diffusion of species in activated carbons is fundamental to many processes in catalysis and energy storage. Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) gives an insight into the molecular-level mechanisms of these phenomena thanks to the unique magnetic shielding properties of the porous carbon structure, which allows adsorbed (in-pore) species to be distinguished from those in the bulk (ex-pore). In this work w Read More

Understanding the manufacture and operation of automotive emissions control particulate filters is important in the optimised design of these emissions control systems. Here we show how magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) can be used to understand the drying process, which is part of the manufacture of catalysed particulate filters. Comparison between a wall-flow particulate filter substrate and a flow-through monolith Read More

This study focuses on new technologies for the production of medical implants using a combination of robotics and microplasma coatings. This involves robot assisted microplasma spraying (MPS) of a multilayer surface structure on a biomedical implant. The robot motion design provides a consistent and customised plasma coating operation. Based on the analytical model results, certain spraying modes were chosen to for Read More

Zinc oxide has emerged as an attractive material for various applications in electronics, optoelectronics, biomedical and sensing. The large excitonic binding energy of 60 meV at room temperature as compared to 25 meV of gallium nitride, an III-V compound makes ZnO an efficient light emitter in the ultraviolet (UV) spectral region and hence favourable for optoelectronic applications. The high conductivity and transpare Read More

Ceramics are traditionally sintered at high temperatures (~80% melting temperature (Tm)). There are numerous incentives to reduce processing temperature: the reduction in processing energy; integration of polymeric and non-noble metals; greater control of microstructure and final component geometries. ‘Cold sintering’ has been developed as a novel method of densification which uses a transient liquid phase, pres Read More