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USGS2011

Activity and stability of immobilized carbonic anhydrase for promoting CO2 absorption into a carbonate solution for post-combustion CO2 capture

An Integrated Vacuum Carbonate Absorption Process (IVCAP) currently under development could significantly reduce the energy consumed when capturing CO 2 from the flue gases of coal-fired power plants. The biocatalyst carbonic anhydrase (CA) has been found to effectively promote the absorption of CO 2 into the potassium carbonate solution that would be used in the IVCAP. Two CA enzymes were immobilized onto three selected support materials having different pore structures. The thermal stability of the immobilized CA enzymes was significantly greater than their free counterparts. For example, the immobilized enzymes retained at least 60% of their initial activities after 90 days at 50 °C compared to about 30% for their free counterparts under the same conditions. The immobilized CA also had significantly improved resistance to concentrations of sulfate (0.4 M), nitrate (0.05 M) and chloride (0.3 M) typically found in flue gas scrubbing liquids than their free counterparts.

Bioresource Technology↗

USGS2000

Rapid distribution of earthquake information for everybody

No matter who you are, seismologist or regular person on the street, when you feel the Earth move you want to know what's going on. Was it an earthquake? Where was the earthquake? How big was it? As a grad student, many moons ago, when the Earth moved, the Electronic Seismologist (ES) was known to immediately turn on the “AM/FM-Automatic-Earthquake-Locator.” Before the seismograms could be pulled off the photographic drums, developed, and read and an “official” hypocenter determined (using a large map and a piece of string to swing arcs), the radio would usually have reported a location. Individuals feeling the earthquake would have called radio and TV stations (not to mention the police, newspapers, and sometimes the seismograph station), reported feeling something, and described what it was like. Reporters taking these calls got pretty good at estimating roughly where the event was, and they sometimes came up with a fairly good estimate of the magnitude. This seat-of-the-pants radio-seismology is fast becoming a lost art. Reporters now race to their computers and point their Web browsers at the nearest seismic network where they can count on finding, within minutes, an automatic but “official” location and magnitude for the earthquake.

Seismological Research Letters↗