Grant to study emissions

Environmental engineering professor Radisav Vidic and his colleagues at the University of Pittsburgh have received a $400,000 federal grant to study how to control mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants.

The three-year award from the Department of Energy will focus on chemical reactions and transformation of mercury in flue gases. The researchers will develop a mathematical model to predict mercury emissions that ultimately will help in the development of mercury control technologies.

Pennsylvania's total mercury emissions are the second highest in the country.

CMU Red Team adds sponsor

Caterpillar is not a word typically associated with speed, but Carnegie Mellon University's Red Team is happy to have picked up Caterpillar Inc. as a major sponsor of its driverless race vehicles.

The company, a leading manufacturer of heavy construction equipment, last year embedded one its engineers, Josh Strubel, as a full-time member of the Red Team and has provided a number of electronic controls and software for the team's two driverless Hummers, Sandstorm and H1ghlander.

The vehicles are now being tested at the Nevada Automotive Test Center in preparation for October's $2 million Grand Challenge off-road race sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

Student develops catalyst

A doctoral student at Carnegie Mellon University has developed a chemical catalyst that works with hydrogen peroxide to destroy nitrophenols, a pollutant found in pesticides and munitions.

Arani Chanda presented the findings from his laboratory tests of the catalysts last night at an American Chemical Society meeting in Washington, D.C. Thousands of tons of nitrophenols are produced each year worldwide.

The catalyst is one of a family of catalysts, called Fe-TAMLs, developed by Terrence Collins, director of the Institute for Green Oxidation Chemistry. The catalysts are considered "green" because they work at normal temperatures and acidity levels.