Tar, the everyday material that seals seams in our roofs and driveways, has an unexpected and unappreciated complexity, according to an MIT research team: It might someday be useful as a raw material for a variety of high-tech devices including energy storage systems, thermally active coatings, and electronic sensors.
Tar, the everyday material that seals seams in our roofs and driveways, has an unexpected and unappreciated complexity, according to an MIT research team: It might someday be useful as a raw material for a variety of high-tech devices including energy storage systems, thermally active coatings, and electronic sensors.
And it’s not just tar. Professor Jeffrey Grossman has a very different view of other fossil fuels as well. Rather than using these materials as cheap commodities to burn up, seal cracks with, or dispose of, he sees potential for a wide variety of applications that take advantage of the highly complex chemistry embedded in these ancient mixtures of biomass-derived carbon compounds.
A significant benefit of such applications is that they provide a way to repurpose materials that would otherwise be burned, adding to greenhouse gas emissions, or disposed of in landfills. These uses could lead to a “greening” of otherwise climate-damaging coal and other carbon-based materials, Grossman says.
Read more at Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Image: Infrared (heat) image shows a heating device made from steam-cracked tar, annealed with a laser, which was formed into an MIT logo to demonstrate the controllability of the process. CREDIT: Courtesy of the researchers
