MIT News October 24, 2024 Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) are organic molecules containing adjacent aromatic rings. Infrared emission bands show that PAHs are abundant in space, but only a few specific PAHs have been detected in the interstellar medium. An international team of researchers (USA – MIT, University of Michigan, Worcester State University, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Harvard Smithsonian, National Radio Astronomy Observatory, Virginia Military Institute, University of Virginia, Canada) detected 1-cyanopyrene, a cyano-substituted derivative of the related four-ring PAH pyrene, in radio observations of the dense cloud TMC-1. They estimated that pyrene contains up to 0.1% of the […]
Tag Archives: Carbon mitigation
New additives could turn concrete into an effective carbon sink
MIT News March 28, 2023 According to the researchers at MIT one potential option to move towards the 2050 carbon neutrality goal is the direct gaseous sequestration and storage of anthropogenic CO2 in concrete through forced carbonate mineralization in both the cementing minerals and their aggregates. They investigated the underlying mechanisms and chemomechanics of cement carbonation over time scales ranging from the first few hours to several days using bicarbonate-substituted alite as a model system. They showed that the carbonation of transient disordered calcium hydroxide particles at the hydration site led to the formation of a series of calcium carbonate […]