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Scientists develop highly efficient industrial catalyst
http://english.yonhapnews.co.kr/business/2011/07/14/48/0501000000AEN20110714009600320F.HTML
SEOUL, July 15 (Yonhap) -- South Korean scientists said Friday that they have developed a highly efficient nanoporous industrial catalyst that can have a considerable impact on chemical and oil-refining sectors.
The team of scientists led by Ryoo Ryong, a chemistry professor at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), said the solid zeolite compound developed in the laboratory has a reaction speed five to 10 times faster than that of conventional materials.
Zeolite, which is made from silica and aluminium, is frequently used as an absorbent, water purifier and in nuclear reprocessing, although it is mainly employed in the chemical industry.
The annual size of the zeolite market is estimated at US$2.5 billion with output using the material topping $30 billion. At present, 41 percent of all catalysts used in the chemical sector are nano-scale zeolite materials.
The KAIST team said that because the new zeolite is made up of different sized pores, the material can be used as a catalyst when existing materials are unable to act as a changing agent.
"Existing zeolites only have pores under 1 nanometer in diameter, but the new material has holes that range from 1 nanometer to 3.5 nanometers, which are all arranged in a regular honeycomb arrangement," Ryoo said. A nanometer is one-billionth of a meter.
He said the ability to have both micro- and meso-sized pores is key to the faster reaction speed that is an integral part of raising efficiency. The South Korean researchers used a so-called surfactant process to make the different sizes of pores.
The development is a breakthrough because researchers and companies such as Exxon Mobil Corp. have been trying to build zeolite with different sizes of pores for the past two decades without making serious headway. There are more than 200 different types of zeolites in the world.
Ryoo, who received funding from the government, has requested intellectual property rights for the discovery, which has been published in the latest issue of Science magazine. He also developed another zeolite in the past that can transform methanol to gasoline up to 10 times more efficiently than existing catalysts.
Exxon Mobil has expressed interest in the two zeolites made by Ryoo"s team. Undisclosed South Korean petrochemical companies have also made inquiries that may lead to commercial development in the future.
"There are some technical issues to resolve, mainly related with mass production and stability," the scientist said.
He said full-fledge production will be determined by how much companies are willing to spend on research to speed up development that can bring down overall production costs.
The KAIST team said it took two years to make the new zeolite, which can be custom made to meet specific needs.
(END)
2011.07.15 View 12729 -
2010 Summer Davos Forum: Online Electric Vehicle Project Presented, September 13-15, 2010 in Tenjin, China
President Nam-Pyo Suh (picture above) was invited by the World Economic Forum to “2010 Summer Davos Forum” held in Tenjin, China, from September 13-15, 2010, at which he presented one of the university’s flagship research projects, Online Electric Vehicle (OLEV), in the session of IdeasLab. The IdeasLab is a special session format to present innovative ideas in partnership with leading universities including Harvard, MIT, Oxford, Ching Hwa University, Keio University, etc. KAIST is the first university in Korea that attended to this session. For details of President Suh’s presentation, Sustainability: An Engine for Growth, please follow the links below:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDUU4RPjibg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-P9StHTt19E
2011.07.11 View 10426 -
KAIST Tops Patent List Among Domestic Universities, Chosun Ilbo, July 5, 2011
According to the Korean Intellectual Property Office, KAIST took the first place among the universities in Korea registering patents from 2006 to 2010. For the article from Chosun Ilbo, please go to the below link:
http://english.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2011/07/05/2011070500743.html
2011.07.05 View 10524
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Professor Choi Han Lim receives Automatica Applications Paper Price
Professor Choi Han Lim of the Department of Aerospace received ‘Automatica Applications Paper Prize’ for the first time ever for a Korean.
Professor Choi published a paper in the Automatica magazine with the topic of ‘Continuous Trajectory Planning of Mobile Sensors for Informative Forecasting’.
Professor Choi dealt with most efficient measuring methods for mobile sensor platforms thereby improving the performance of anticipating environmental changes and proposed key theories for problem solving and also an efficient algorithm.
The research was conducted in cooperation with MIT Department of Aerospace Professor Jonathan How with the support of the National Science Foundation.
Automatica
Journal published by the International Federation of Automatic Control and has been awarding the Automatica Paper Prize every three years.
2011.05.31 View 8811
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Displaybank, KAIST Develops Flexible Display Metal Wiring Technology, May 27, 2011
On May 26, Korea Advanced Institute of Science (KAIST) announced that team of Prof. Yang from the Department of Mechanical Engineering developed flexible display metal wiring manufacturing-technology. For the article, please follow the link,
http://www.displaybank.com/eng/info/sread.php?id=5877
2011.05.31 View 9259
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Research Conducted on the Development Policy of Medical Researchers in United States
The topic dealt in the paper was “The Vietnam War and Medical Research: Untold Legacy of the U.S. Doctor Draft and the NIH ‘Yellow Berets’” and basically deals how a Doctor Draft made a positive impact on improving the basic research of clinical medicine.
Professor Park received his Doctorate at Johns Hopkins University and came to KAIST in 2007.
Summary of Dissertation
From the start of the Korean War in 1950 to the end of the Vietnam War in 1973 a large number of medical school graduates were drafted to the army. Of those drafted, 100 personnel were chosen annually to focus on researching in the National Institute of Health who developed into leaders of the field.
For example, those who worked as a researcher at the National Institute instead of their armed services were 1.5 times more likely to become a tenured professor, 2 times more likely to be promoted to Dean of the department, and 3 times more likely to be the Dean. In addition, 9 out of 50 Nobel Prize winners in fields of natural sciences between 1985 and 2007 were from the same pool of researchers, and 10 out of 76 recipients of National Medal of Science were also from the same pool of researchers.
They were named the ‘Yellow Berets’ like the special forces ‘Green Berets’ and made great contribution to the field in implementing and executing the bench to beside culture that involves development in laboratories to clinical testing.
Professor Park maintains that there has to be improvements made in current policies to encourage research work in medical graduate schools.
2011.05.31 View 11416
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South Korean scientists use laser to inject drugs into brain by Bernama.com, May 26, 2011
Bernama.com, the Malaysian national news agency, reported on the recent development by a KAIST research team of a safe and cheap treatment method for various neurological diseases. For details, please follow the link:
http://www.bernama.com/bernama/v5/newsworld.php?id=589195
2011.05.31 View 10357
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Remote Follows Your Thumb by Discovery News, May 19, 2011
The ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, an international conference of human-computer interaction, was held on May 7-12, 2011 in Vancouver, Canada. At the conference, KAIST’s research team presented a paper on the development of prototype, called "remote touch system," for manipulating a LED screen by putting user’s thumb’s shadow on a television or smart phone screen. Discovery News posted an online article on the technology, dated May 19, 2011. For the article, please copy and paste the following link in the address bar of Internet Explorer:
http://news.discovery.com/tech/shadow-remote-touchscreen-110519.html?print=true
2011.05.20 View 9229
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'WWW2014' to be held in Seoul
WWW2014 (World Wide Web 2014) will be held in Seoul.
KAIST, Agency for Technology and Standards, W3C (World Wide Web Consortium), and ETRI (Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute) all worked in cooperation to have WWW2014 in Seoul. The announcement that WWW2014 will be held in Seoul was announced in the Closing Ceremony of WWW2011 India Conference. Seoul overtook Adelaide and Melbourne of Australia.
Hosting WWW2014 in Seoul will be a great opportunity to showcase Korea’s Web Technology and get a grasp on the current trend in the field of high tech web technology and services.
The WWW conferences are attended by over 1,000 experts all over the world and are the world’s largest international conference in the field of IT.
Efforts to host the conference in their own respective countries are made on a national scale. The WWW2011 was hosted in India with the President of India giving an opening ceremony speech and WWW2013 will be hosted in Brazil in part due to the President himself sending a letter to express their desire to host WWW conference.
2011.05.11 View 11160
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Oh Myung Chairman of the Board gives Special Lecture in the S+ Convergence AMP Program
Chairman Oh Myung (CEO of Woong Jin Energy Poly Silicon) gave a special lecture in the KAIST S+ Convergence AMP Program with the topic of ’Dream of a Korea 30 years into the future’.
Chairman Oh insisted to the program attendees that they do their best in developing Korea through development of new technology and IT and that he considers education and development of new technology as the reason for Korea’s rapid development.
The program invites a guest speaker every month, apart from the planed lectures. The guest speakers were the top of their respective fields. In addition, various activities like riding the OLEV or domestic workshops or educational trips abroad imparted the ability to take on a global perspective.
2011.05.11 View 9169
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Lee Kang Gook Chief of Constitutional Court gives Lecture at KAIST
Chief of Constitutional Court Lee Kang Gook (66) gave a lecture on the 29th of April in Turman Hall on the topic of “Constitutional Trial: the Present and the Future”.
Chief Lee graduated from Seoul National University’s College of Law and was sworn into Chief of Constitutional Court on January of 2007.
He gave a lecture to those students enrolled in Leadership Program which is a program that aims at broadening the perspective and thought of KAIST students.
2011.05.11 View 7797
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From Pencil Lead to Batteries: the Unlimited Transformation of Carbon
Those materials, like lead or diamond, made completely up of Carbon are being used in numerous ways as materials or parts. Especially with the discovery of carbon nanotubes, graphemes, and other carbon based materials in nanoscale, the carbon based materials are receiving a lot of interest in both fields of research and industry.
The carbon nanotubes and graphemes are considered as the ‘dream material’ and have a structure of a cross section of a bee hive. Such structure allows the material to have strength higher than that of a diamond and still be able to bend, be transparent and also conduct electricity. However the problem up till now was that these carbon structures appeared in layers and in bunches and were therefore hard to separate to individual layers or tubes.
Professor Kim Sang Wook’s research team developed the technology that can assemble the grapheme and carbon nanotubes in a three dimensional manner.
The team was able to assemble the grapheme ad carbon nanotubes in an entirely new three dimensional structure. In addition, the team was able to efficiently extract single layered grapheme from cheap pencil lead.
Professor Kim is scheduled to give a guest lecture in the “Materials Research Society” in San Francisco and the paper was published in ‘Advanced Functional Materials’ magazine as an ‘Invited Feature Article’.
2011.05.11 View 11793