February
23, 2021
12:58 AM
By Tom
Westbrook
SINGAPORE
(Reuters) - The dollar nursed losses near a six-week low on Tuesday and
commodity-linked currencies loitered around multi-year highs, as investors’
focus shifted to how U.S. Federal Reserve chief Jerome Powell might respond to
resurgent inflation expectations.
Surging prices for materials from
oil and copper to lumber and milk powder have pushed currencies such as the
Canadian, Australian and New Zealand dollars to their highest in roughly three
years.
However the gains have come with a
worldwide rise in inflation expectations and a big sell-off in longer-dated
bonds.
Traders expect Powell, who testifies
before Congress at 1500 GMT, to provide some reassurance that the Fed will
tolerate higher inflation without rushing to raise rates. That might calm bond
markets and eventually weigh on the dollar, they said.
“I think he will talk up the
downside,” said Commonwealth Bank of Australia currency analyst Joe Capurso in
Sydney.
“If anything, I think he will give
markets a bit of a cold shower and say: ‘Mr Market you’re getting a bit ahead
of yourself. There are plenty of risks...and the U.S. economy is long, long way
from full employment.’”
Asia trade was dampened by a public
holiday in Tokyo, but renewed confidence that low U.S. interest rates will not
rise anytime soon could clear the way for further gains in trade-exposed
currencies at the dollar’s expense.
Positioning data shows investors
overwhelmingly betting that a U.S. dollar that has been dropping since last
March will keep falling as the world recovers from the COVID-19 pandemic, even
if short holdings have been trimmed slightly in recent weeks.
More
https://www.reuters.com/article/global-forex/forex-dollar-hits-six-week-low-as-focus-turns-to-powell-idUSL1N2KT07S
But, don’t panic
says top economist David Rosenberg. While I hope upon hope he’s right, my worry
is that the Great North American Global Warming Freeze, plus a falling dollar
and President “Bailout Everything” Biden, might have just triggered very real,
dreaded food price inflation in 2021 and not in 2022 as I expected as late as
last month.
David
Rosenberg: Stop worrying about inflation, there are real risks on the horizon Like a 2021 economic boom followed by a 2022 bust Feb 22, 2021
We are clearly in the midst of a
supply constraint-led commodity boom, but we saw this in the 2002-07 cycle and
again in the 2009-19 cycle and they do create hiccups, but not lasting
inflationary effects.
Now, nobody is saying that there
isn’t pressure on some parts of the pricing system. Transportation costs are on
the rise as container shortages wreak havoc. Supply chains have been disrupted
by the pandemic and its aftershocks. The next issue will be how much can be
passed onto consumers when the United States economy is short 9.4 million jobs
from what could be classified as a labour market tight enough to have
bargaining power.
But there is no evidence of any wage
impulse at all, given the ongoing high level of resource slack in the labour
market, and it could take years for this to be resolved (U.S. secretary of the
treasury Janet Yellen is talking more like a politician than an economist when
she publicly declares otherwise). There are also the technological advances to
consider, which by themselves hold back unit costs via productivity gains, and
an aging population, since people in their 60s and 70s spend 40 per cent less
in the economy than folks in their 30s, 40s and 50s.
More
https://financialpost.com/investing/investing-pro/david-rosenberg-stop-worrying-about-inflation-there-are-real-risks-on-the-horizon
Supporting his
position, there’s still big trouble in much of the real economy. But stagflation
in 2021 is a very real danger, while food price inflation often/usually ends in
social disorder.
Travel’s Covid-19 Blues Are
Likely Here to Stay—‘People Will Go Out of Business’ The
tourism industry, which hoped for a rebound from the pandemic in 2021, is
bracing for a slower recovery Updated Feb. 21, 2021 4:07 pm ET
The outlook for a rebound in travel this year has dimmed
after the global pandemic ravaged the industry and hurt tourism-dependent
economies, with travelers postponing plans amid vaccine delays and border
restrictions.
Tourist destinations from Thailand to Iceland had been
hoping Covid-19 vaccines would allow countries to reopen their borders and
drive a much-needed recovery in 2021. Now, with vaccine rollouts delayed in some places and new virus strains
appearing , it is looking more likely that international travel could be
stalled for years.
After declaring that 2020 was the worst year for tourism on
record, with one billion fewer international arrivals, the United Nations World
Tourism Organization says prospects for a 2021 rebound have worsened. In
October, 79% of experts polled by the agency believed a 2021 rebound was possible.
Only 50% said they believed that in January, and some 41% didn’t think travel
would reach pre-pandemic levels until 2024 or beyond.
James Sowane, who owns a transportation company catering to
tourists in Fiji, called a staff meeting earlier this month and told employees
to start looking for other jobs. He recently took advantage of a
government-assistance program and had brought back some laid-off workers,
optimistic that vaccines could spark a travel rebound as early as April.
But
now Mr. Sowane doesn’t think tourists will return until next year, and he and
his wife can’t afford to keep paying wages at their company, Pacific
Destinations Fiji. He is borrowing from his bank to keep a few core employees.
---- Before the pandemic, travel, tourism and related
business activity accounted for 10% of the global economy, and one in 10 jobs,
according to estimates from the World Travel & Tourism Council. Many
places, from Pacific islands to Macau to Greece, were even more reliant on
tourism than that.
“People will go out of business,”
said Ross Dowling, an honorary professor of tourism at Edith Cowan University
in Australia. “They’re not going to survive if they can’t adapt, and no amount
of resilience is going to get you through another year.”
As of Feb. 1, air tickets issued for
international travel in the coming six months were 15.5% of what they were in
2019, down roughly 2 percentage points compared with Jan. 1, according to
travel analytics company ForwardKeys. Scheduled flights this month are down
nearly 50% globally compared with February 2019, with some markets down about
90%, according to data company Cirium.
More
https://www.wsj.com/articles/travels-covid-19-blues-are-likely-here-to-staypeople-will-go-out-of-business-11613912401
‘We were wiped out.’ Merchants in
historic Philadelphia market grapple with pandemic February 22, 2021 11:10 AM
(Reuters) - Athens Voulgaridis and his
family have run their Greek gyro stand in Philadelphia’s Reading Terminal
Market since 1984, outlasting three recessions and a trademark battle with the
U.S. Olympic Committee.
No crisis has hit the business as
hard as the COVID-19 pandemic, which caused a brief shutdown and slashed sales
by as much as 80% at the lowest point.
Typically a bustling hub of
restaurants, shops and food vendors, the indoor market, which celebrates its
128th anniversary on Monday, stayed open throughout the pandemic. But with
conventions on pause, tourism down and much of the lunch crowd now working
remotely, foot traffic at the market whittled down to roughly a third of its
normal levels.
“We were wiped out,” said Annie
Allman, who took over as chief executive and general manager of the Reading
Terminal Market in late January.
Merchants selling meat, cheese and
other staple grocery items in one of the country’s oldest and largest markets
have seen steadier traffic.
But restaurants that cater to people
in need of a quick bite or visiting the landmarked building located
conveniently close to the city hall and convention center downtown were more
acutely affected by restrictions on travel and indoor dining to slow the spread
of the virus.
Visits to the greater Philadelphia
area dropped by as much as 40% last year and spending by visitors was cut
roughly in half, according to projections from Econsult Solutions, Inc.
The challenges the market’s
merchants are facing are indicative of the hurdles impeding restaurants, shops
and other service industry employers across the country that are seeing slow
rebounds as people remain hesitant to travel or spend time close to each other
indoors.
“All our customer base has just
disappeared,” said Voulgaridis, 48, who took over the family business, Olympia
Gyro, in 2009 as the economy was coming out of the Great Recession. In 2012, he
received a cease and desist notice from the U.S. Olympic Committee, requiring
him to change the name of the business from Olympic Gyro.
While sales are improving after the
city reinstated indoor dining earlier this year, they are still down by about
65% from pre-pandemic levels, Voulgaridis said.
---- The
market is surviving thanks to a combination of government aid, fundraising and
investments made to its online delivery services, said Allman, the market’s
CEO.
With many vendors struggling to keep
up with their bills, organizers raised more than $520,000 to help cover
operating costs through a campaign on the crowdfunding website GoFundMe.com and
other fundraising efforts.
The market also revamped its online
ordering service and introduced curbside pickup.
More
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-philadelphia-marke/we-were-wiped-out-merchants-in-historic-philadelphia-market-grapple-with-pandemic-idUSKBN2AM11X?il=0
Next, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Unless
of course, you’re a western spook.
Chinese spyware code was copied
from America's NSA - researchers February 22, 2021 11:13 AM
By Raphael Satter
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Chinese spies used
code first developed by the U.S. National Security Agency to support their
hacking operations, Israeli researchers said on Monday, another indication of
how malicious software developed by governments can boomerang against their
creators.
Tel Aviv-based Check Point Software
Technologies issued a report noting that some features in a piece of
China-linked malware it dubs “Jian” were so similar they could only have been
stolen from some of the National Security Agency break-in tools leaked to the
internet in 2017.
Yaniv Balmas, Checkpoint’s head of
research, called Jian “kind of a copycat, a Chinese replica.”
The find comes as some experts argue
that American spies should devote more energy to fixing the flaws they find in
software instead of developing and deploying malicious software to exploit it.
The NSA declined comment. The
Chinese Embassy in Washington did not respond to requests for comment.
A person familiar with the matter
said Lockheed Martin Corp – which is credited as having identified the
vulnerability exploited by Jian in 2017 – discovered it on the network of an
unidentified third party.
In a statement, Lockheed said it
“routinely evaluates third-party software and technologies to identify
vulnerabilities.”
Countries around the world develop
malware that breaks into their rivals’ devices by taking advantage of flaws in
the software that runs them. Every time spies discover a new flaw they must
decide whether to quietly exploit it or fix the issue to thwart rivals and
rogues.
That dilemma came to public
attention between 2016 and 2017, when a mysterious group calling itself the
“Shadow Brokers” published some of the NSA’s most dangerous code to the
internet, allowing cybercriminals and rival nations to add American-made
digital break-in tools to their own arsenals.
How the Jian malware analyzed by
Checkpoint was used is not clear.
---- Checkpoint says Jian appears to have
been crafted in 2014, at least two years before the Shadow Brokers made their
public debut. That, in conjunction with research published in 2019 by Broadcom
Inc-owned cybersecurity firm Symantec about a similar incident, suggests the
NSA has repeatedly lost control of its own malware over the years.
Checkpoint’s research is thorough
and “looks legit,” said Costin Raiu, a researcher with Moscow-based antivirus
firm Kaspersky Lab, which has helped dissect some of the NSA’s malware.
More
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-cyber-china/chinese-spyware-code-was-copied-from-americas-nsa-researchers-idUSKBN2AM11R?il=0
Next up, worrying news from the Arctic. Is Siberia’s
record breaking heatwave last year, about to repeat?
First Arctic
Navigation in February Sends a Worrying Climate Signal Melting ice in the Arctic allowed a gas tanker to sail
through the Northern Sea Route in the middle of winter Laura Millan Lombrana
February 22, 2021, 7:32 AM EST
A tanker sailed through Arctic sea ice in
February for the first time, the latest sign of how quickly the pace of
climate change is accelerating in the Earth’s northernmost regions.
The Christophe de Margerie was
accompanied by the nuclear-powered 50 Let Pobedy icebreaker as it sailed back
to Russia this month after carrying liquified natural gas to China through
the Northern Sea Route in January. Both trips broke navigation records
“I am confident that the Northern Sea Route is competitive,
that changes in the ice situation and the improvement of marine technologies
create new conditions for its development,” said Yury Trutnev, Russia’s
deputy prime minister and a member of the supervisory board at Rosatom, the state-owned
nuclear corporation that manages the route.
The experimental voyage happened
after a year of extraordinarily warm conditions in the Arctic that have sent shockwaves
The Arctic is warming more than twice as quickly as
the rest of the world and the area covered by ice there has reached historic
lows multiple times over the past 12 months. Satellite images show that ice
coverage is now 7% lower
The melting in the region is
already in line with the worst-case climate scenarios . The loss is equivalent
to a 100-meter-thick sheet of able to cover the whole of the U.K.
The shrinkage means Arctic
navigation routes remain open for longer. Last year’s season was the longest on record in May
More
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-02-22/first-arctic-navigation-in-february-sends-a-worrying-climate-signal
Finally, with China threatening rare earths supply to the
west, yet again, the UK dabbles in rare earth recycling with some very interesting
partners.
Plus, an interesting new fund idea from a proven success.
Good luck to all, though somehow I think they make their
own good luck.
Rare earth magnets from old
computers to find use in electric Bentleys By Nick Lavars February 21, 2021
Rare earth magnets form an important
part of many of today's electronic devices, ranging from wind turbine
generators to MRI scanners. Despite their prevalence, only a tiny fraction of
these magnets are recycled once they reach the end of their lives, but a new
project involving Bentley Motors is intended to steer this trend back in the
right direction, by repurposing them for use in luxury vehicles.
The new UK-funded venture goes by
the name of the RaRE (Rare-earth Recycling for E-machines) and involves a
number of industry partners in addition to Bentley, with a technology patented
by researchers at the University of Birmingham and now licensed to spin-off
company HyProMag serving as the bedrock. This is called Hydrogen Processing of
Magnet Scrap (HPMS), and involves breaking down rare earth metals in discarded
electronic devices as a way of separating them from the other bits and pieces.
As part of a new three-year agreement, the researchers will
now adapt this technology to recycle rare earth magnets from old computer hard
drives, which will be used in ancillary motors for Bentley's electric and
hybrid vehicles. The luxury automaker has taken tentative steps toward
electrification in recent years, introducing a Bentayga
Hybrid in 2018 following a string of electric
sports car concepts .
A key focus of the project will be coming up with a way of
scaling up this HPMS recycling process to produce more substantial amounts of
neodymium magnets (NdFeB), the most common form of rare earth metal.
“RaRE is an exciting project and a fantastic opportunity,'
says Nick Mann, Operations General Manager at HyProMag. "HyProMag’s
recycling technologies allow us to produce NdFeB magnets with a much lower
embedded carbon cost than using virgin supply and with independence from
Chinese supply and we are working closely with our major shareholder Mkango
Resources to further grow the business."
Source: University of Birmingham
https://newatlas.com/materials/rare-earth-magnets-old-computers-electric-bentleys/
‘Mick the
Miner’ Looks to Recharge With Battery Metals One of the mining industry’s most prolific
dealmakers, Mick Davis has set up a new fund to invest in metals required to
store power Feb. 21, 2021 7:52 am ET
One of mining’s heavyweights is betting on batteries to
power his comeback.
Mick Davis, a key figure in the megamergers of BHP Glencore
His wager: Efforts to move to low-carbon energy will
require more batteries and provide a permanent shift in metals demand.
Once the preserve of consumer products, batteries are disrupting the automotive and energy industries
The last big secular change Mr. Davis said he bet on was
China in 2002, when he became chief executive of Xstrata. Driven by a belief
that resources like coal, copper and zinc would be in demand as China
developed, he helped transform the small Switzerland-based miner via a string
of deals into a more than $50 billion giant.
The 63-year-old is looking to bounce back after a recent
venture, the mining fund X2 Resources, failed to make any investments
Mr. Davis said he realized the strength of the move toward
greener fuels several years ago as global leaders criticized the Trump
administration’s environmental policies, including withdrawing the U.S. from
the Paris climate accord.
----Mr. Davis’s new fund Vision Blue Resources Ltd. has so
far raised $60 million and plans to amass a war chest of several hundred
million. In its first deal, the fund recently invested $29.5 million in NextSource Materials
“There is a secular change in demand, not driven by GDP
growth but by a consensus in government,” he said.
Mr. Davis said he wants to invest in projects that he could
help to bring to fruition, scale up quickly and that don’t require big
investments in infrastructure, such as roads and train tracks.
He expects demand for battery metals to be driven by electric
vehicles
Analysts are positive about demand for battery metals. The
average amount of metal in an electric-vehicle battery today is 50 kilograms to
200 kilograms, which at current costs is $500 to $2,000 per vehicle, according
to Bernstein Research.
“Multiply that by one billion electric vehicles, and you
can see the potential for tremendous demand,” Bernstein said in a recent
report. Car makers say that within the next five years electric vehicles will
cost the same amount to build as their gas-powered counterparts, propelling
further demand.
More
https://outlook.live.com/mail/inbox/id/AQMkADAwATEyODM3LTRjMmMtYzM0NAAtMDACLTAwCgBGAAADQRNns3806EGEdmuacr5nJgcA7UaNFSPVKkyjNNpztB6gvQAAAgEMAAAA7UaNFSPVKkyjNNpztB6gvQAE7DUNzQAAAA%3D%3D?state=0
“I don’t make jokes. I
just watch the government and report the facts.” Will Rogers.
Covid-19 Corner This
section will continue until it becomes unneeded.
Coronavirus Scotland: Vaccination
linked to 'substantial reduction' in hospital admissions By Helen
McArdle @HMcardleHT Health Correspondent 22 February, 2021 Vaccination has been linked to a
substantial reduction in the risk of Covid-19 admissions to Scotland’s
hospitals, landmark research suggests.
The study is the first to describe
across an entire country the effect of the Pfizer and Oxford-AstraZeneca jabs
in the community on preventing severe illness resulting in hospitalisation.
Previous results about vaccine efficacy have come from clinical trials.
By the fourth week after receiving
the initial dose, the Pfizer and Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccines were shown to
reduce the risk of hospitalisation from Covid-19 by up to 85 per cent and 94
per cent, respectively.
Among those aged 80 years and over - one of the highest
risk groups - vaccination was associated with an 81 per cent reduction in
hospitalisation risk in the fourth week, when the results for both vaccines
were combined.
As part of the EAVE II project, which uses patient data to
track the pandemic and the vaccine roll out in real time, researchers from the
Universities of Edinburgh, Strathclyde, Aberdeen, Glasgow and St Andrew’s and
Public Health
Scotland (PHS) analysed a dataset covering the entire Scottish population of
5.4 million.
Data on vaccine effect was gathered
between 8 December and 15 February. During this period, 1.14 million vaccines
were administered and 21 per cent of the Scottish population had received a
first dose based on Scottish Government prioritisation.
The Pfizer vaccine has been received
by some 650,000 people and 490,000 have had the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine.
Researchers analysed data for every
week during this period – including GP records on vaccination, hospital
admissions, death registrations and laboratory test results – and compared the
outcomes of those who had received their first jab with those who had not.
The preliminary results have been
posted on the SSRN preprint server and submitted to a journal to undergo peer
review.
More https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/19107740.coronavirus-scotland-vaccination-linked-substantial-reduction-hospital-admissions/ Pfizer-BioNTech Shot Stops Covid
Spread, Israeli Study Shows By Naomi Kresge
and Jason
Gale February 21, 2021, 6:49 AM EST Updated on February 21,
2021, 8:35 PM EST
The Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech
SE Covid-19 vaccine appeared to stop the vast majority of recipients in
Israel becoming infected, providing the first real-world indication that the
immunization will curb transmission of the coronavirus.
The vaccine, which is being rolled out in a national
immunization program that began Dec. 20, was 89.4% effective at preventing
laboratory-confirmed infections, according to a copy of a draft publication
that was posted on Twitter and confirmed by a person familiar with the work.
The companies worked with Israel’s Health Ministry on the preliminary
observational analysis, which wasn’t peer-reviewed. Some scientists disputed
its accuracy.
The results, also reported in Der Spiegel , are the latest in a series
of positive
data to emerge out of Israel, which has given more Covid vaccines per capita
than anywhere else in the world. Almost half of the population has had at least
one dose of vaccine. Separately, Israeli authorities on Saturday said the
Pfizer-BioNTech shot was 99% effective at preventing
deaths from the virus.
More Than 202 Million Shots Given: Covid -19 Tracker
If confirmed, the early results on lab-tested infections
are encouraging because they indicate the vaccine may also prevent asymptomatic
carriers from spreading the virus that causes Covid-19. That’s not been clear
because the clinical trials that tested the safety and efficacy of vaccines focused
on the ability to stop symptomatic infections.
Herd Immunity “These are the data we need to see to estimate the
potential for achieving herd immunity with vaccines,” said Raina MacIntyre,
professor of biosecurity at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, in an
email Monday. “However, we do need to be able to see the data published in a
peer-reviewed journal and to be able to scrutinize the data in detail.”
Pfizer and BioNTech said they are working on a real-world
analysis of data from Israel, which will be shared as soon as it’s complete.
Spokespeople declined to comment on unpublished data.
The study wasn’t designed to accurately measure a reduction
in transmission of SARS-CoV-2 because it used national testing data without
accounting for differences in testing rates between vaccinated and unvaccinated
people, said Zoe McLaren , an associate professor in the school
of public policy at the University of Maryland Baltimore County.
“The main result overstates the reduction in transmission
from the Pfizer vaccine,” McLaren said in an email.
The study compares the number of reported cases between
those who had been fully vaccinated and those who hadn’t been vaccinated, but
vaccinated people are less likely to get tested so the data will undercount
cases, especially asymptomatic cases, in this group, she said.
More
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-02-21/pfizer-biontech-shot-stops-covid-s-spread-israeli-study-shows
Why We Can’t Make Vaccine Doses
Any Faster President Biden
has promised enough doses for all American adults by this summer. There’s not
much even the Defense Production Act can do to deliver doses before then. by Isaac Arnsdorf and Ryan Gabrielson Feb.
19, 5 a.m. EST
President Joe Biden has ordered
enough vaccines by
July
Vaccine supply chains
are extremely specialized and sensitive, relying on expensive machinery, highly
trained staff and finicky ingredients. Manufacturers have run into intermittent
shortages of key materials, according to the U.S. Government
Accountability Office flour chicken
wings toilet
paper
People often
question why the administration can’t use the mighty Defense Production Act —
which empowers the government to demand critical supplies before anyone else —
to turbocharge production. But that law has its limits. Each time a
manufacturer adds new equipment or a new raw materials supplier, they are
required to run extensive tests to ensure the hardware or ingredients
consistently work as intended, then submit data to the Food and Drug
Administration. Adding capacity “doesn’t happen in a blink of an eye,” said
Jennifer Pancorbo, director of industry programs and research at North Carolina
State University’s Biomanufacturing Training and Education Center. “It takes a
good chunk of weeks.”
More
https://www.propublica.org/article/covid-vaccine-supply?utm_source=pocket&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=pockethits
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on Sme.sk and Korzar.sk Next, some vaccine links
kindly sent along from a LIR reader in Canada. The links come from a most
informative update from Stanford Hospital in California.
World
Health Organization - Landscape of COVID-19 candidate vaccines . https://www.who.int/publications/m/item/draft-landscape-of-covid-19-candidate-vaccines
NY
Times Coronavirus Vaccine Tracker . https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/science/coronavirus-vaccine-tracker.html
Stanford
Website . https://racetoacure.stanford.edu/clinical-trials/132
Regulatory
Focus COVID-19 vaccine tracker . https://www.raps.org/news-and-articles/news-articles/2020/3/covid-19-vaccine-tracker
Some other useful Covid links.
Johns Hopkins Coronavirus
resource centre
https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html
Rt Covid-19
https://rt.live/
Covid19info.live
https://wuflu.live/
Centers for Disease Control
Coronavirus
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/index.html
The Spectator
https://data.spectator.co.uk/city/national
Technology Update.
With events happening
fast in the development of solar power and graphene, I’ve added this section.
Updates as they get reported.
New catalyst converts methane
into methanol at room temperature By Nick Lavars February 21, 2021
Methanol has wide-ranging potential as a cleaner fuel for powering
advanced automobiles or producing plastic materials or other chemicals, and
recently we're seeing how the production
side of things could prove a boon for the environment, too. Scientists at
the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC) have now found a catalyst that allows
the methane in natural gas to be converted into methanol in a far less
energy-intensive way than current solutions.
While
natural gas produces around 50 to 60 percent less carbon dioxide than other
fossil fuels when it is burned, it is still a notable contributor to climate
change, pumping around 1.6 gigatons of the greenhouse gas into the atmosphere
from the US in 2019, according to the UIC team. Methane serves as the primary
component in natural gas, and by converting it into clean-burning methanol
scientists see a greener way forward for this resource, though this involves
high heat and pressure in a process that itself generates substantial carbon
emissions.
“Researchers have been interested in
ways to convert methane to methanol at ambient temperatures to sidestep all the
heat and pressure that is currently required in industrial processes to perform
this conversion,” says Meenesh Singh, author of the new research.
The reason that such intense heat
and pressure is needed for this process is because the hydrocarbon bonds within
the methane need to first be broken. The UIC team has now identified a new
catalyst made from titanium and copper that enables this to take place at room
temperature instead, needing only a small amount of electricity
to kick off the chemical reaction.
“We have been able to reduce the
temperature of the industrial process from more than 200 °C (392 °F) to room
temperature, which is around 20 °C (68 °F),” says study author Aditya
Prajapati.
Because this new technique doesn't
require complex, industrial-scale machinery to produce the high heat and
pressure, the researchers say the system can be set up easily and cheaply.
They've filed a patent for the technology, and believe that a small, portable
system could produce several liters of methanol a day.
“Our process doesn’t need to be
centralized,” Singh says. “It can be implemented in a space as small as a van
and is portable for distributed utilization of natural gas and manufacturing of
methanol.”
The research was published in the journal Proceedings
of the National Academy of Sciences .
https://newatlas.com/energy/new-catalyst-methane-methanol-room-temperature/
“Things will get better — despite our efforts to improve them.” Will Rogers.
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