95% water, yet dry

DRY WATER:SCIENTISTS AT the University of Liverpool believe that an unusual substance, known as dry water, could provide a new way to store and absorb carbon dioxide (CO2).

Speaking in Boston recently, PhD researcher Ben Carter explained that it became known as dry water because it consists of 95 per cent water and yet is a dry powder.

Each particle contains a water droplet surrounded by modified silica – the stuff that makes up ordinary beach sand. The silica coating prevents the water droplets from combining and turning back into a liquid, resulting in a fine powder that can slurp up gases, which chemically combine with the water molecules to form what chemists term a hydrate.

Scientists at the university have since found that in lab tests dry water absorbed over three times as much CO2 as ordinary, uncombined water and silica. It could also store methane, which could then be used more widely as an energy source, they claimed.

In another potential application, they also showed that dry water is a promising means to speed up catalysed reactions between hydrogen gas and maleic acid to produce succinic acid, a raw material widely used to make drugs, food ingredients and other consumer products.