April 23, 2014

Nanoreporters tell ‘sour’ oil from ‘sweet’




Rice University’s hydrogen sulfide nanoreporters gather intel on oil before pumping 

Scientists at Rice University have created a nanoscale detector that checks for and reports on the presence of hydrogen sulfide in crude oil and natural gas while they’re still in the ground.

The nanoreporter is based on nanometer-sized carbon material developed by a consortium of Rice labs led by chemist James Tour and is the subject of a new paper published this month in the American Chemical Society journal ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces.