SYDNEY, Oct. 12 (Xinhua) -- Australian researchers have shed light on simpler ways of making liquid metals, pointing to novel methods of capturing carbon dioxide, decontaminating water and plugging other major environmental problems.
Chemical engineers from the University of New South Wales in Sydney studied liquid metals such as gallium, bismuth and tin and their role as catalysts to speed up chemical processes using low amounts of energy, according to a statement from the university late Friday.
Professor Kourosh Kalantar-Zadeh of UNSW's School of Chemical Engineering said that "anyone with a shaker and a cooktop at home in their kitchen can make catalysts that can be used for CO2 conversion, cleaning water and other pollutants.
"They can do this by using a combination of liquid metals like gallium, indium, bismuth and tin in alloys that can be melted under 300 C on a cooktop or in an oven."
Liquid metal alloys can be used to remove or neutralize pollutants in the environment as well as capture the carbon in CO2 emissions, according to the researchers, whose findings were published in the Nature Communications scientific journal.
Tin, gallium and bismuth when in liquid form can be used as electrodes to convert carbon dioxide into useful byproducts, while the liquid metals when heated to make oxides can also be used to absorb energy from light, which enables them to break down contaminants in water, they said.
What makes liquid metals an attractive option in solving environmental problems is the fact they can be cheaply produced using low energy and in a low-tech environment, according to the university.
"Metals such as tin and bismuth are accessible to many people around the world," Kalantar-Zadeh said.
"Additionally, playing with liquid metals is fun. While the most famous liquid metal - mercury - is well known to be hazardous, a liquid metal like gallium is completely non-toxic, and meltable at or near room temperature, where we can use it to transform one material to another at very low input energies. Liquid metals could solve lots of problems that we as humans are grappling with these days."