> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.clevernewstuff.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Honeycomb catalyst turns 99% steelworks CO2 into methane - URL: https://www.clevernewstuff.com/honeycomb-catalyst-turns-99-steelworks-co2-into-methane/ - Published: 2026-11-04T03:50:52.000Z - Updated: 2026-11-04T03:50:52.000Z - Description: Steelworks pilot, with about an eighth of the commercial catalyst's pressure drop. Plus three more items - Author: CNS Staff - Tags: lithium cathode, gamma-alumina, LMFP, corrision ###### PROCESS AND CHEMICALS ### Honeycomb catalyst turns 99% of steelworks CO2 into methane in pilot plant Researchers report a honeycomb-shaped catalyst that turned 99.0% to 99.8% of captured carbon dioxide (CO2) into methane – synthetic natural gas – in a two-stage industrial pilot plant. That could let a steelworks turn its own captured CO2, and hydrogen made from water with electricity, into gas for the furnaces, rolling mills and power plants it already runs on gas, the authors say. Against the commercial catalyst it converts slightly less CO2 in a single pass, but with about an eighth of the pressure drop – the resistance gas meets on its way through. The pilot ran for more than 85 hours on real CO2 and hydrogen from an integrated steelworks. The authors are from Montanuniversität Leoben, Ceram Austria GmbH, and K1-MET GmbH. The catalyst is a honeycomb of gamma-alumina, a ceramic, carrying about 30 wt% nickel (30% of its weight), about half as much again as the commercial catalyst. It was tested in a two-stage pilot reactor fed with CO2 captured from steelworks flue gas and hydrogen from a 6 megawatt electrolyzer (a machine that splits water into hydrogen and oxygen using electricity). Across pressures of 4 and 8 bar gauge (above atmospheric pressure) and gas flows of 6,000–20,000 reactor volumes an hour, the first stage alone converted 78.1%–89.1% of the CO2; a second stage, with water removed in between, raised conversion to 99.0%–99.8%, with methane reaching 95.0% by volume of the dry product gas. In a separate single-stage lab comparison, the honeycomb converted an average 2.9 percentage points less CO2 than a commercial nickel-alumina sphere catalyst, the kind already used for industrial methane production. Its pressure drop was about eight times lower, 11–13 millibar against roughly 83 mbar for the spheres, and its hot spot – the hottest point in the catalyst – ran 2.5–50.0 °C cooler. The authors attribute the lower pressure drop to the honeycomb's straight channels, and the conversion gap mainly to its lower internal surface area. **The limits.** In the single-stage lab comparison, the commercial sphere catalyst converted more CO2 than the honeycomb at every condition tested; closing this gap is for future work. That comparison did not use the full two-stage plant that produced the 99% figure. The honeycomb's internal surface area, 89 m²/g (square meters of surface per gram of catalyst), is well below the commercial catalyst's 130–170 m²/g. The 85-hour run included daily shutdowns and weekend breaks, after which the catalyst's behavior was unchanged; a 1,000-hour test is planned next. One author works for Ceram Austria, a ceramics company, and another for K1-MET. The paper declares no competing interests. Tests used voestalpine Stahl's infrastructure, in the EU-funded Hy2Market project. **Read the paper:** "Development and industrial demonstration of a structured Ni-AlOx honeycomb catalyst for CO2 methanation," *Fuel* (2026). [DOI: 10.1016/j.fuel.2026.141922](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.fuel.2026.141922?ref=clevernewstuff.com) --- ###### ENERGY AND GRID ### Coated battery cathode keeps 88.9% capacity after 150 cycles at 4.99 V Researchers report a coated battery cathode – the positive electrode of a lithium-ion cell – that kept 88.9% of its capacity after 150 charge cycles at 4.99 volts in lab test cells. The uncoated control failed by 80 cycles under the same test. The authors point to electric vehicles and consumer electronics, where higher-energy cathodes extend range and run time. Among earlier attempts, the authors cite a modified lithium-rich cathode that held 86.7% of its capacity after 100 cycles. The authors are from the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, the University of Science and Technology of China, and Dalian Maritime University. The cathode is made by coating lithium-rich manganese-based oxide particles with tannic acid, then heating to grow a thin carbon layer with spinel-phase nanodots beneath it. These are specks about 30 nanometers across of a sturdier, three-dimensional crystal arrangement, which the authors say spread the strain of charging so the particles do not crack. The coated material, HV-LRO, and an uncoated control were cycled in lithium-metal half-cells, which supply excess lithium rather than a commercial cell's limited anode. At a slow charge rate, HV-LRO delivered an initial capacity of 295 mAh/g (milliamp-hours per gram, the charge stored per gram of material) with 93.1% recovered on the first cycle, against 267 mAh/g and 79.0% for the control. At 45 °C and 4.8 volts, HV-LRO kept 79.2% of its capacity after 200 cycles, against 43.2% for the control. Pouch cells pairing HV-LRO with a silicon-carbon anode, built to 1.58 amp-hours (the total charge a cell holds) and cycled between 2 and 4.7 volts at 0.8C (a full charge or discharge in about 75 minutes), delivered 307 watt-hours per kilogram (Wh/kg) – the energy stored for each kilogram of the whole cell – and kept 70.7% of their capacity after 100 cycles. That test used a lower voltage and a shorter run than the half-cell test. The authors credit the carbon layer with blocking oxygen loss. **The limits.** The headline 88.9% figure comes from lithium-metal half-cells, which supply unlimited lithium, and not a commercial cell's limited anode. The only full-cell test, in pouch cells, ran at a lower 4.7-volt cutoff than the 4.99 V used for the half-cell result, reaching 70.7% retention after 100 cycles. No comparison is made to commercial nickel-rich or iron-phosphate cathodes, only to the authors' own uncoated control and other lab-scale lithium-rich cathodes. The paper is the journal's unedited advance version, so the figures may change in the final one. **Read the paper:** "Ultrastable 4.99 V Li rich Mn-based cathodes achieved by catalytic-shielded and strain-buffered interface engineering," *National Science Review* (2026). [DOI: 10.1093/nsr/nwag659](https://doi.org/10.1093/nsr/nwag659?ref=clevernewstuff.com) · [Free PDF](https://academic.oup.com/nsr/advance-article-pdf/doi/10.1093/nsr/nwag659/72522373/nwag659.pdf?ref=clevernewstuff.com) --- ###### ENERGY AND GRID ### Pressed to 2.5 g/cm³, LMFP cathodes on plain foil match carbon-coated foil Researchers report that pressing a lithium manganese iron phosphate (LMFP) battery cathode harder lets it work on plain aluminum foil as well as on costlier carbon-coated foil. Calendered – pressed between heavy rollers – to 2.5 grams per cubic centimeter (g/cm³), cathodes on plain foil matched the fast-charge capacity of cathodes on coated foil. Pressed to 2.75 g/cm³, the plain-foil cathode kept 93% of its capacity after 300 charge cycles, against 39% for the most lightly pressed one – erasing the lifetime advantage coated foil shows at low densities. The authors' check of online prices puts coated foil at about six times the cost of plain foil, though at lab-scale quantities rather than industrial supply. This matters for cell makers building LMFP batteries for fast-charging electric vehicles. The paper's title and abstract lead with a 15-minute, 10%–80% fast-charge test; its repeated-cycle and lifetime data are the more concrete result. The authors say carbon-coated foil is the usual fix for LMFP's poor fast-charge performance, needed because lightly pressed plain-foil cathodes have far higher contact resistance. The authors are from the University of Warwick, the Faraday Institution, Imperial College London and Polaron, a London battery-characterization company. The cathodes, 93% active material (the substance that stores charge) and about 80 micrometers (µm, millionths of a meter) thick, were cast onto plain or carbon-coated aluminum foil and pressed to densities between 1.95 and 2.75 g/cm³. In coin cells (small lab test batteries) against graphite anodes, the most lightly pressed plain-foil cells had almost no capacity left at 2C (a full charge or discharge in 30 minutes; 1C takes an hour). Carbon-coated cells still gave 85 milliamp-hours per gram (mAh/g) at 5C (12 minutes). At 2.50 g/cm³, both foils gave about 65 mAh/g at 5C. Probe measurements showed plain-foil contact resistance – how hard current finds it to cross from cathode to foil – falling from 10.4 ohm-square-centimeters at 2.15 g/cm³ to 0.21 at 2.70 g/cm³, matching carbon-coated foil, which stayed below 0.2 at all densities. Cross-section images showed cathode particles embedding into the plain foil, covering 83% of its surface at 2.75 g/cm³ against 28% at 1.95 g/cm³ – an effect the authors credit with closing the contact gap the coating normally bridges. **The limits.** Rate and lifetime tests ran in coin cells. A larger pouch cell was tested separately, with results only in the supplement. Densities of 2.5 g/cm³ and above required calendering a narrow strip under 2 cm wide, so full-width manufacturability is untested. The embedment effect likely depends on an active material's hardness and particle shape, and the authors note that overcalendering (pressing too hard) could make electrodes too brittle to wind into cylindrical cells, untested here. Two of the seven authors are from Polaron. The paper declares no conflicts of interest. **Read the paper:** "Battery Electrode Engineering Enables Fast Charging LMFP Cells Without Carbon‐Coated Foil," *Advanced Science* (2026). [DOI: 10.1002/advs.78510](https://doi.org/10.1002/advs.78510?ref=clevernewstuff.com) · [Free PDF](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdfdirect/10.1002/advs.78510?ref=clevernewstuff.com) --- ###### INSTRUMENTATION AND MEASUREMENT ### Recalibration cuts corrosion-driven density error from 3.35 to within 0.10 kg/m³ Researchers report that corrosion inside a density meter used in industrial pipelines pushed its measurement error to 3.35 kg/m³ after nine years on its factory settings, far above its rated accuracy of 0.15 kg/m³. A recalibration against a traceable standard (one tied to national measurement standards) cut the error to between 0.01 and 0.10 kg/m³. These meters set product cut-offs in multi-product pipelines, convert flow into mass for custody transfer (the handover of product between owners, where it is billed), and measure liquefied CO2, LNG and hydrogen, where an uncorrected drift can misroute product or skew billed mass. The authors say plants can currently recheck a meter only against its original factory settings, under China's rule JJF 2164-2024, without redetermining the full set. The authors are from the National Institute of Metrology, China. Three process meters returned from service were checked against the institute's traceable primary density standard: a straight-tube 7835-type meter and two U-tube CDM100P/M models, all 25 mm bore (the inside diameter of the tube). Tests used reference liquids spanning 750–1,000 kg/m³ at 20 °C, plus checks from 13–47 °C (286–320 K) and up to 25 bar (25 times atmospheric pressure, roughly). The 7835 meter, the most heavily corroded, gave a 3.35 kg/m³ error on water using its 2015 factory coefficients, against a 0.15 kg/m³ specification. Three recalibrations, in 2021, 2023 and 2024, cut this to 0.052, 0.013 and 0.010 kg/m³. The lightly corroded CDM100P meter, specified to 0.1 kg/m³, stayed within 0.13–0.20 kg/m³ across four sets of coefficients from 2017 to 2023\. The intermediate CDM100M meter ranged from 0.43 to 1.01 kg/m³ across sets from 2017 to 2021. The authors attribute the drift to corrosion changing the tube's effective vibrating mass, shifting the period-density relationship in a way only recalibration, not a simple offset, can correct. They group service duty into five severities and suggest recalibration intervals from 6 months for severely corroded meters to 36 months for clean duty. **The limits.** Interval guidance comes from just three meters of two designs, called preliminary by the authors. Coefficients are valid only over 750–1,000 kg/m³; extrapolating to 1,200 kg/m³ adds up to 0.17 kg/m³ of uncertainty. Corrosion was judged only by endoscope (a camera looking inside the tube), not wall-thickness or mass-loss measurement. No model yet predicts drift from operating history. **Read the paper:** "Traceable Calibration of Process Oscillation Type Density Meters: Corrosion Induced Drift Correction," *Applied Sciences* (2026). [DOI: 10.3390/app162110572](https://doi.org/10.3390/app162110572?ref=clevernewstuff.com) *Reply with corrections, tips or leads. If this was useful, forward it to someone who’d want it. Subscribe at clevernewstuff.com.*