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Insight into benzene formation could help development of cleaner combustion engines
Researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), the University of Hawaii at Manoa, and Florida International University have demonstrated the first real-time measurement using lab-based methods of free radical particles reacting under cosmic conditions, prompting elementary carbon and hydrogen atoms to coalesce into primal benzene rings.
The researchers say that their findings, recently published in an open-access paper in the journal
Science Advances, are key to understanding how the universe evolved with the growth of carbon compounds. That insight could also help the car industry make cleaner combustion engines.
Key to Cleaner Combustion? Look to the Stars
6H
6, the benzene ring – an elegant, hexagonal molecule comprised of 6 carbon and 6 hydrogen atoms.
Astrophysicists say that the benzene ring could be the fundamental building block of polycylic aromatic hydrocarbons or PAHs, the most basic materials formed from the explosion of dying, carbon-rich stars. That swirling mass of matter would eventually give shape to the earliest forms of carbon – precursors to molecules some scientists say are connected to the synthesis of the earliest forms of life on Earth.
Paradoxically, PAHs have a dark side, too. The industrial processes behind crude oil refineries and the inner-workings of gas-powered combustion engines can emit PAHs, which can snowball into toxic air pollutants like soot.