Nanomaterials may boost gas tank storage capacities

Greatly increasing the storage capacity of gas tanks is just one of the applications being made possible because of a revolutionary TARDIS-like nanomaterial being manufactured by MOF Technologies, a new spin-out company from Queen's University, Belfast.

A cylinder filled with this material, known as MOFs or 'metal-organic frameworks', can store much more gas than an empty cylinder of the same size, but until now MOF manufacturing techniques have been limited as they are costly, slow and require large quantities of solvents which can be toxic and harmful to the environment.

Now, a new technique devised by the company allows the simple, environmentally-friendly production of these incredible materials, which have the potential to revolutionise applications including hazardous gas storage, natural gas vehicles, carbon capture and drug delivery.

MOFs have the highest surface-area of any known substance and a sugar-lump sized piece of MOF material can have the same surface area as a football pitch.

Professor Stuart James in Queen's School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering has patented a novel technique for the synthesis of MOFs, allowing affordable, large-scale deployment of these ground-breaking materials.

The new Queen's technology is environmentally-friendly, rapid and highly-scalable and has resulted in the formation of MOF Technologies through Queen's spin-out arm QUBIS. Seed funding has been provided by both QUBIS and NetScientific, which specialises in commercialising technologies developed within university laboratories.