Fuel

Engineers at the National University of Singapore have developed a new way to convert natural gas into a solid form, enabling safer and easier storage and transport. The process can be done in just 15 minutes using a low-toxicity mixture.

Reaction Engines and Britain's Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) have completed a concept study into the practicality of using ammonia as a sustainable, low-emission jet aviation fuel.

Researchers at the US Dept of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory have discovered a new catalyst that can convert carbon dioxide and water into ethanol with "very high energy efficiency, high selectivity for the desired final product and low cost."

BMW i Ventures announced today it is investing in Prometheus Fuels. The Silicon Valley startup is working on technologies for pulling CO2 out of the atmosphere and processing it into carbon-neutral gasoline.

Artificial leaves can convert sunlight, water and carbon dioxide into energy or even be used to produce fuels. Now, researchers from Cambridge have developed a new version that can produce synthetic gas (or syngas) without releasing carbon dioxide.

Hydrazine rocket fuel is highly toxic, carcinogenic and unstable, making it incredibly dangerous to work with. Scientists at McGill believe their new alternative, based on metal-organic frameworks, will lead to cleaner, safer, more controllable rockets.

​​Millions of metric tons of plastic are produced each year and in reality, very little of it is recycled. But what if there were more ways of turning this waste into something valuable, be it new plastics, hydrocarbons or different types of fuel?

Israeli-Australian company Electriq Global's new technology stabilizes hydrogen in a recyclable liquid that can be pumped and transported just like gasoline. That's huge, because it enables long-range electric driving with fast refueling – and it plugs right into the existing fuel logistics model.

​​Porsche has announced that it is turning its back on diesel-powered vehicles, instead choosing to shift its focus toward a cleaner energy future. The news comes three years after parent company Volkswagen admitting to using a defeat device to cheat emissions testing.

Direct air capture (DAC) systems have been discussed as a possibility for removing CO2 from the air, but until recently seemed too expensive. After running a pilot plant for three years, Carbon Engineering (CE) has broken down the costs of a DAC system and found how it can work.

Several experiments have shown that the EMDrive can generate thrust from basically nothing – in apparent violation of Newton’s Laws of Motion. Unfortunately, a German team has now built and tested their own EMDrive, and found that environmental factors may have been responsible for false positives.

Researchers at MIT have developed a new membrane-based system that can convert carbon dioxide emissions into useful alternate fuels. The process has been effectively demonstrated on a small-scale and the researchers hope to ultimately adapt the system to conventional fossil fuel-based power plants.