Super blooming gel 'cleanses' chemicals

Japanese chemists have created a gene that extends up to 500 times the initial size when exposed to solvents - a feature that can be exploited to absorb toxic industrial chemicals. spill, overflow.

(Photo: iStockphoto) Professor Kazuki Sada from Kyushu University works published in the journal Natural Materials. This new aldehyde is a step up from polyelectrolyte gels - other super-permeable polymers have the ability to swell hundreds of times when exposed to water or other polar liquids.

However, polyelectrolyte gels, best known for their hypochlorite in children's diapers, can not handle organic substances, or carbon based solvents. This is because of the fragile texture of this gel by the bonding of charged atoms.

Japanese scientists have sought to avoid that, by adding tetra-alkylammonium tetraphenylborate, a less-polar solvent-absorbing compound. This allows the gel to swell out instead of collapsing.

The new gel has been successfully tested, able to absorb carbon tetrachloride, toluene, tetrahydrofuran and other common industrial solvents, the team reports.

T. An