The substance resembles powdered sugar and is expected to make a big commercial splash. Each particle of dry water contains a water droplet surrounded by a sandy silica coating. In fact, 95% of dry water is “wet” water. One of its key properties is a powerful ability to absorb gases.

Scientists believe dry water could be used to combat global warming by soaking up and trapping the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide. Tests show that it is more than three times better at absorbing carbon dioxide as ordinary water. Dry water may also prove useful for storing methane and expanding the energy source potential of the natural gas.

Dr Ben Carter, from the University of Liverpool, presented his research on dry water at the 240th National Meeting of the American Chemical Society in Boston. He said: “There’s nothing else quite like it. Hopefully, we may see dry water making waves in the future.”

Another application demonstrated by Dr Carter’s team was using dry water as a catalyst to speed up reactions between hydrogen and maleic acid. This produces succinic acid, a key raw material widely used to make drugs, food ingredients, and consumer products.

Usually hydrogen and maleic acid have to be stirred together to make succinic acid. But this is not necessary when using dry water particles containing maleic acid, making the process greener and more energy efficient.

“If you can remove the need to stir your reactions, then potentially you’re making considerable energy savings,” said Dr Carter.

The technology could be adapted to create “dry” powder emulsions, mixtures of two or more unblendable liquids such as oil and water, the researchers believe. Dry emulsions could make it safer and easier to store and transport potentially harmful liquids.

[Yahoo News]

In a tail wagging the dog reversal, researchers have found that simple chemical reactions can mix a solution. Usually, chemicals are stirred to enhance a reaction, but a new study finds that the reverse is also true: Simple chemical reactions can trigger fluid flows, reports a paper in the January 29 Physical Review Letters.

The research has implications for many chemical reactions, including those inside stars or when carbon dioxide stored deep in the earth encounters water, says study coauthor Anne De Wit of the Université Libre de Bruxelles in Belgium.

De Wit and her colleagues wondered what would happen to fluid flows if the reacting liquids were left alone and not stirred. The researchers watched a very simple reaction — the neutralization that occurs between hydrochloric acid and sodium hydroxide, a common chemical base — in the absence of stirring.

The researchers carefully injected the denser sodium hydroxide into a container and then added the hydrochloric acid. The sodium hydroxide stayed on the bottom and the hydrochloric acid sat on top. Where the two reactive chemicals met, the reaction’s products — table salt and water — began to form. As the salty solution formed, it crept upward and hit the lower-density acid, creating tendrils that started to mix the solution. But the same didn’t happen below the reaction line. This difference in how the reaction product interacted with each of its chemical parents drove the mixing the team observed.

These asymmetrical patterns, the researchers say, distinguish mixing during a chemical reaction from what happens when two nonreactive liquids meet, which may look more like diffusion or other kinds of mixing.

“These kinds of beautiful patterns can be observed with very well-known reactions,” says study coauthor Christophe Almarcha, also of the Université Libre de Bruxelles. “This is quite fascinating for someone who’s done this reaction hundreds of times.”

The researchers also describe reaction-driven mixing mathematically by creating a model that predicted a pattern that looked like the real thing. The model can be tweaked to predict patterns for other chemical reactions, which would vary widely, Almarcha says.

“Our little model system says ‘pay attention,’” De Wit says. “If there are reactions, then new things will happen.” For instance, if stored carbon leaches into an aquifer and starts reacting with water, “those reactions will trigger flows, which will enhance the mixture,” she says.

Image and Video: C. Almarcha/Université Libre de Bruxelles

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