Several recent papers describe how Oak Ridge National Laboratory researcher Yuri Melnichenko and his collaborators continue to use neutrons and small-angle neutron scattering to bore through geological materials such as nanoporous carbons to understand their unique properties as storage media for greenhouse gases and for hydrogen in fuel cells used in transportation. The SANS method also shows promise for strategies for extracting a cleaner form of energy methane gas from hard shales. In other recent work on the behavior of CO2 confined in nanopores, the researchers turned to a silica aerogel model system as a good matrix material. They varied the silica aerogel surface chemistry to see how this influenced the phase behavior of the molecules of stored CO2.
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