I don't know about you, but the idea of diesel particulates (soot) lodging themselves on my brain doesn't sit well with me. While scientists and researchers have known for some time that diesel soot clings to our grey matter, just recently Dutch scientists were able to convince 10 people to sit in a room filled with diesel exhaust so that they could monitor their brain waves. Not surprisingly, their brains showed signs of "stress" just thirty minutes into this operation. We're not going to argue with these results... in fact we thought it was just common knowledge that breathing exhaust fumes, whether from either gas or diesel burning cars, was a bad idea. Ah well, at least we now have scientific data on the topic.

[Source: Drive.com.au]

One of the unwanted byproducts of the oil cracking industry, as well as internal combustion engines (especially diesels), are aromatic hydrocarbons. They're called aromatic because they smell - but some of them are really toxic. We're speaking about solvents like benzene, toluene or xylene (the three are nicknamed BTX).

When there's a problem, people try to find a solution and here comes a group of researchers at the Inorganic Chemistry Department at the Universidad de Granada in Spain. They claim they have created a gel that absorbs BTX, called "carbon monolithic aerogel." Besides a (claimed) high power of absorption, this aerogel can be reused many times, allowing easy disposal of BTX. It's also rattle- and movement-resistant, which would allow easy installation in tailpipes.

This work has been published in specialist magazines "Carbon", "Journal of Physical Chemistry" and "Langmuir".

[Source: Universidad de Granada via Econoticias]