Photo-pyrolysis means splitting molecules into smaller gaseous and solid molecules via heat generated from flashes of intense white light. Through this process, scientists are able to turn banana peels into hydrogen, hydrocarbons, carbon monoxide, and biochar. Before photo-pyrolysis, banana peels were dried at 105°C for 24 hours to remove moisture. Afterwards, they were ground into a fine powder and exposed to the flash of a xenon lamp. This process yielded 100 litres of hydrogen per kilogram of banana peel in just 14.5 milliseconds. Read full article here
Science
‘Ghostly’ neutrinos provide new path to study protons
In groundbreaking research, an international collaboration of scientists from the University of Rochester have used a beam of neutrinos to measure the size and shape of the protons that make up the nuclei of atoms. This feat, once thought impossible, provides scientists with a new way of looking at the small components of an atom’s nucleus and opens up a wealth of new information about the structure of an atom’s nucleus and the dynamics of the forces that affect neutrino interactions. The researchers solved the challenge of harnessing neutrinos in large numbers by using a neutrino detector containing a target of both hydrogen and carbon atoms, and over nine years of data collection at Fermilab’s accelerator. Read full article here
Merv
March 25, 2023
