Catalyst converts methane into polymers at room temperature

This is the claim of chemical engineers, who believe the new catalyst could be deployed at sites of methane production, including power plants and cattle sheds.

“What to do with methane has been a longstanding problem,” said Michael Strano, the Carbon P. Dubbs Professor of Chemical Engineering at MIT and senior author of the study published in Nature Catalysis. “It’s a source of carbon, and we want to keep it out of the atmosphere but also turn it into something useful.”

Methane is produced by methanogens, a form of bacteria found highly concentrated in landfills, swamps, and other sites of decaying biomass. Agriculture is a major source of methane, and methane gas is also generated as a by-product of transporting, storing, and burning natural gas. Overall, it is estimated to account for about 15 per cent of global temperature increases.

At the molecular level, methane is made of a single carbon atom bound to four hydrogen atoms. In theory, this molecule should be a good building block for making useful products such as polymers. So far, converting methane to other compounds has proven difficult because getting it to react with other molecules requires high temperature and high pressures.