"Hydrogen peroxide vapor, as spread around patients' rooms by these devices, represents a major technological advance in preventing the spread of dangerous bacteria inside hospitals and, especially, from one patient occupant to the next, even though sick patients were never in the same room at the same time," says infectious disease specialist and study senior investigator Trish Perl, M.D., M.Sc. Moreover, researchers found that protection from infection was conferred on patients regardless of whether the previous room occupant was infected with drug-resistant bacteria or not.
Results showed that the enhanced cleaning reduced by 64 percent the number of patients who later became contaminated with any of the most common drug-resistant organisms. In the study, the Johns Hopkins team placed the devices in single hospital rooms after routine cleaning to disperse a thin film of the bleaching hydrogen peroxide across all exposed hospital equipment surfaces, as well as on room floors and walls. 1 in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases. government agencies in case of an anthrax attack - is to be published Jan. Sign up here.Infection control experts at The Johns Hopkins Hospital have found that a combination of robot-like devices that disperse a bleaching agent into the air and then detoxify the disinfecting chemical are highly effective at killing and preventing the spread of multiple-drug-resistant bacteria, or so-called hospital superbugs.Ī study report on the use of hydrogen peroxide vaporizers - first deployed in several Singapore hospitals during the 2002 outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, and later stocked by several U.S. The Forever Project's Olivia Wannan will keep you in the know each week. “The potential for this technology and the product is huge.” If all goes well, Pang estimates the system could produce hydrogen and carbon dioxide at scale in about a decade. Capturing and selling the carbon dioxide – because much more of this gas is made during the process – will help make the production economically competitive. In the longer-term, the university team’s work could provide a third pathway, for countries such as Aotearoa with large forestry sectors. But hydrogen facilities must build additional renewable generation, such as wind farms, or risk increasing the amount of coal and gas burned to create power. The Ballance Agrinutrients factory is running a small pilot to make hydrogen via electrolysis, then fertiliser. In 2019, domestic chemical production from natural gas released 1.8 million tonnes of greenhouse emissions into the atmosphere.Īt the moment, the lowest-carbon way to make hydrogen is by using electricity to split water. Industry already manufactures plenty of hydrogen gas to create chemicals including methanol and fertiliser – though this is typically from natural gas. It’s expected to replace fossil fuels in the production of lower-carbon steel as well as powering off-road vehicles. It can be burnt or chemically combined with oxygen, to release energy and water. Hydrogen gas is a promising zero-carbon fuel.
“For commercial production, we’ll need to increase the scale by 100 times – not the physical size, but the capacity.” The machine is currently as large as a two-storey building, Pang added. For every kilogram of wood, the process extracts about 70 grams of hydrogen.īut at the moment, this takes a long time, Pang said. Water molecules have two atoms of hydrogen, so by adding steam to the mix, the team is able to extract more hydrogen than is just contained within the wood. These make the process more effective, “unlocking” the potential of the wood matter, he said.
To boost the creation and separation of the gases, Yip spent 10 years developing special materials, known as catalysts. Then, steam is added and the process converts, purifies and separates this gas mixture into hydrogen in one chamber and carbon dioxide in another. The researchers see this material as an opportunity to create two products: climate-friendly hydrogen gas and carbon dioxide.įirst, wood is chemically processed in a large machine – developed at Canterbury University over 15 years – to create a mixture of gases, including hydrogen, carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide and methane. Researchers want to transform it into green gas.
The forestry sector produces roughly 3 million tonnes of woody residue.