'Crushing' Chemical Research has Potential for More Sustainable and Cost-Effective Chemical Manufacturing
Scientists are working to reveal the atomic-level mechanisms inside the crushing and grinding of mechanical chemistry, with the potential to scale up their advances to make chemical manufacturing more sustainable and cost-effective.
Understanding the atomic-scale mysteries of "crushing" chemistry is the goal of an expanding research center with a newly awarded $20 million investment from the U.S. National Science Foundation. Managed by Texas A&M University, NSF's Center for the Mechanical Control of Chemistry (CMCC) will conduct the most rigorous exploration yet into how the mechanical application of force can enable new advances in chemistry, with the potential to make industrial processes cheaper and more environmentally friendly.