U.S. Crude Oil and Petroleum Products Exports Skyrocket After Iran War Shock to Markets: LNG Exports Expected to Grow as Well

     AAPG’s Well Read editor Shangyou Nie, recently posted about increasing U.S. exports of crude oil, petroleum products, and LNG in light of the disruptions to Middle East output due to the Iran situation. U.S. exports have increased dramatically. He summarizes the situation below:

“The Energy Information Administration reported that the total U.S. crude and petroleum product exports reached a record 12.9 million barrels per day during the week of 17 April. The United States is already the world’s largest LNG exporter. With the ongoing war in Iran, U.S. oil and gas supply has become more important to Europe and Asia.”

“The average weekly export of U.S. crude and petroleum products jumped from 10.6 million barrels per day during the first week of March to 12.9 million barrels per day by mid-April.”

     That represents an increase of nearly 22%, which is quite a lot in the period of just over a month. U.S. crude oil and petroleum products exports began to increase in 2008 and have steadily increased since then, first reaching 10 million barrels per day in 2022. The latest EIA data has crude exports at 4.8 million barrels per day and petroleum product exports at 8.1 million barrels per day.

     He notes that the increase in U.S. exports has been driven by two factors: 1) an increase in U.S. oil output, and 2) the availability of Venezuelan crude to U.S. refineries since the beginning of the year.

     He also notes that Japan has likely been the most impacted country, with 90% of its crude oil imports coming from the Middle East through the Strait of Hormuz. Japan is already one of the largest buyers of U.S. LNG and desires to buy more. U.S. LNG exports continue to increase and pass new milestones, with more export facilities in the works for the future. U.S. LNG exports are now up to 15 BCF/day and are expected to grow to 18 BCF/day in 2028. He notes that despite these expected export increases, domestic prices for natural gas are not expected to grow very much, with only marginal growth expected.

     With European sanctions on Russian pipelined gas, imports of U.S. LNG are expected to grow and remain robust. Since the advent of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Europe has been buying the bulk of U.S. LNG and that remains the case, with Europe currently purchasing two-thirds of U.S. LNG. Demand for LNG in Asia also remains high, especially with Middle East supplies disrupted.

   

 

References:

 

U.S. Oil and Petroleum Product Exports Reach Record as the War in Iran Continues. AAPG. Well Read. Shangyou Nie. 

Southeast Asia’s Deepwater Oil & Gas Exploration Resurgence Can Produce Needed Resources, but Economics are Marginal, According to Wood MacKenzie

     Wood MacKenzie’s Angus Rodger and Munish Kumar recently summarized new developments in deepwater oil & gas exploration in Southeast Asia. I occasionally post about new discoveries and have included some from the region, including a recent large natural gas and condensate find in offshore Indonesia’s Kutei Basin.

     The WoodMac analysts note that Southeast Asia had a deepwater 1.0 period when deepwater exploration was new to the area, and reserves were found, followed by a period of few discoveries. Now, they say a new period of discoveries has begun.

“The first wave of Asian deepwater projects (‘Deepwater 1.0’) took place between 2008 and 2017, during which approximately 23 tcf of gas (4 bnboe) was developed. This period saw the first-ever deepwater gas projects in Malaysia, India and China. Since then, activity has been sporadic, constrained by commercial, strategic, technical and regulatory challenges.”

     They note that about 28TCF is ready to be monetized in these plays, but economics will likely be tougher than the Deepwater 1.0 period. They do, however, cite a good investment environment and geopolitical stability in the area to help develop these reserves, which are needed, especially with ongoing supply disruptions in the Middle East, which have been hurting Asian economies.

     Despite the potential value of these reserves and the need to secure more energy, as the graph below shows, achieving economic success will be difficult, and margins can be impacted by unforeseen events like cost overruns and delays.

“Despite the material resource volumes, the economics of Deepwater 2.0 projects are exceptionally fragile. Wood Mackenzie data shows that achieving a targeted 15% internal rate of return (IRR) leaves little margin for cost overruns, schedule delays or fiscal slippage.”

"Success will depend on three critical factors: accelerating development timelines, leveraging brownfield infrastructure and maintaining disciplined project execution. Those that secure infrastructure early, lock in service capacity and move decisively will capture value. Those that cannot risk seeing project value erode rapidly."

    

   

References:

 

Southeast Asia faces its deepwater gas 2.0 moment: We explore how operators can navigate fragile economics to unlock 28 tcf of critical new deepwater gas supply across the region. 23 April 2026. Angus Rodger and Munish Kumar. Wood MacKenzie. Southeast Asia faces its deepwater gas 2.0 moment | Wood Mackenzie

 

 

 

 

 

Surfactant Chemistry for Enhanced Oil Recovery: Natural/Bio-Surfactants, Supramolecular Carriers, Polymeric Surfactants, and Nano Emulsions Emerge as Suitable Technologies

     Chemical enhanced oil recovery (CEOR) has been around for a while. Recently, interest has grown as it has been successfully deployed. A July 2023 paper in the journal Energy & Fuels explains that surfactants work by:

“…changing either fluid/rock and/or fluid/fluid interaction due to ion-pair forming and/or surfactant adsorption on the rock surface. As the main surfactant role in EOR, IFT {inter-facial tension} reduction refers to adsorbing of surfactant molecules on the residual oil/water interface, which causes an increase in capillary number; as a result, trapped oil drops in porous media get free and start to move through the pore space toward the production well.”

     That paper also notes that the downsides of chemical surfactants, including toxicity, cost, and environmental impact, can be overcome if significant natural surfactants are developed through methods such as so-called “green chemistry,” via plant-based surfactants.

     A July 2024 paper in the journal ACS Omega: Advancements in Surfactant Carriers for Enhanced Oil Recovery: Mechanisms, Challenges, and Opportunities, explores EOR surfactants and surfactant carriers.

     The paper explains some of the issues with surfactants below:

“Surfactant injection is a widely used chemical EOR method that aims to change the rocks’ wettability, reduce the interfacial tension between the oil and water phases, making the oil more mobile and easier to displace from the reservoir rock. This method has been successfully applied in several field projects, and recent studies have focused on optimizing the formulation of surfactant solutions and understanding the mechanisms of oil displacement by surfactants. Despite their high efficiency, the surfactants used in EOR processes must be carefully evaluated due to their production cost, toxicity, and tendency to adsorb on the reservoir surfaces.”

     Targeted delivery of the surfactants via carrier systems has also been a focus in recent years. Supramolecular technologies have gained in importance “due to their unique self-assembly properties and ability to form complex, functional structures.” They explain supramolecular carrier systems below:

“Supramolecular carrier systems exploit noncovalent interactions, such as hydrogen bonding, van der Waals forces, hydrophobic interactions, pi-pi stacking, and ion-dipole interactions, to create highly ordered structures capable of encapsulating and releasing surfactants in a controlled manner. The self-assembly of these systems enables the formation of micelles, vesicles, and other nanostructures with tunable characteristics, designed to respond to external stimuli such as changes in pH, temperature, or the presence of specific ions. This responsiveness allows for the controlled and localized release of surfactants, enhancing the efficiency of the EOR process.”

     They also explain non-supramolecular methods, especially nanoparticle methods, several involving nanoparticles or nano-structured materials:

“On the other hand, nonsupramolecular carrier systems, including inorganic or polymer nanoparticles, liposomes, and other nanostructured materials, such as carbon nanotubes and graphene, have also demonstrated promising results. These systems often utilize covalent bonding and physical encapsulation methods to protect and transport active surfactant molecules. Surface engineering of these materials can be tailored to improve surfactant transport and release, making them suitable for a wide range of industrial applications, including EOR.”

     Choosing which kind of surfactant and delivery method can depend on the qualities of the reservoir rock. These include mineralogy, the rock’s “wettability,” and chemical factors such as pH and the rock’s ionic charge. Thus, for instance, cationic surfactants are used with limestone reservoirs and anionic surfactants are used with sandstone reservoirs.

     Surfactant loss is a challenge that must be mitigated. That is a major reason why transport or delivery of the surfactants to the reservoir rock is so important. The graphic flow chart below explores strategies to reduce surfactant loss.

     The graphic chart below examines the environmental concerns of surfactants.

     

     The paper examines in detail several types of potential surfactant carriers, including inorganic nanoparticles, carbon nanomaterials, polymeric agents and surfactants, and supramolecular systems.

     The company Locus Bio-Energy Solutions, which develops biosurfactants for EOR, says that “biosurfactants are the future of sustainable and more effective oil recovery.” They define surfactants as follows, and note that they are used in many industries, including agriculture, cosmetics, food and beverage, pharmaceuticals, mining, oil & gas, remediation, wastewater, and many more:

“Surfactants are compounds with inherent properties that reduce the surface and interfacial tension between two liquids, a gas and a liquid, or a liquid and a solid.”

“Surfactants, or surface-active agents, are compounds that contain a hydrophilic, or “water-loving” head, and a hydrophobic, or “water-fearing” tail—allowing them to lower the surface tension between liquids, gases or solids. In oilfield applications, surfactants are critical components of scale and corrosion inhibitors, hydraulic fracturing fluids, drilling muds and enhanced oil recovery treatments.”

     Surfactants can function as cleansers, detergents, dispersants, foamers, emulsifiers, viscosity builders, and wetting agents. They are used in several different ways in oil & gas development and extraction. There is a growing push these days to develop biosurfactants as a more sustainable approach. Biosurfactants are produced biologically via microorganisms, which can produce a variety of “surface-active substances.” While microbes produce the biosurfactants, the biosurfactants themselves are not alive. They are also sterile.

“All biosurfactants are amphiphiles, they consist of two parts—a polar (hydrophilic) moiety and non polar (hydrophobic) group.”

     As noted below, biosurfactants have several advantages over chemical surfactants and bio-based chemical surfactants:

“Biosurfactants, specifically fermentation-produced biosurfactants, offer significant advantages over synthetic surfactants and other bio-based surfactants. These include enhanced multifunctional performance, better environmental compatibility, 10x lower toxicity, higher biodegradability and maintained activity under extreme conditions of temperatures, salinity and pH values.”

     While biosurfactants have been around for a while, in the past, they have been cost-prohibitive. Locus Bio-Energy says they have developed a cheaper way to produce them via fermentation. They say they can provide them with less than 10% of the CAPEX required for traditional recovery methods. They note that past methods of microbial enhanced oil recovery (MEOR) developed in the 1980s and 90s sought to produce the microbes in situ, essentially growing them downhole. The results were inconsistent, and the process was hard to control. Locus Bio-Energy’s final product is different since it does not contain the microbes, which are confined to the fermentation vats. They also design biosurfactant treatment to remediate wells from paraffin and wax buildup and for use in frac fluids during hydraulic fracturing of wells.

     Surfactant flooding has long been used to aid heavy oil recovery. It creates an emulsion that can separate out the oil for extraction. In a March 2026 paper in Physics of Fluids, Wang et al. studied the use of nano-emulsions in surfactant flooding to increase the efficacy of oil recovery.

“When surfactants are added to [an] oil-sand mixture, the hydrophobic tails can penetrate into the oil phase to reduce the heavy oil viscosity and oil-water interfacial tension,” said author Wanying Wang. “Consequently, the oil can be effectively removed from the oil-sand mixtures.”

     Nano-emulsions contain smaller drops than traditional emulsions, which results in more uniform droplet dispersion and long-term stability.

“The team found that combining a nonionic surfactant, fatty alcohol polyoxyethylene ether (AEO-7), and an anionic surfactant, sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS), showed the best oil-washing efficiency.”

“This is attributed to the synergistic stabilization of the oil-water interface by AEO-7 and SDS … which promotes oil peeling and enhances oil–sand separation,” Wang said.

“This study provides novel interfacial mechanical insights for developing high-performance nano-emulsion systems.”

     It appears that surfactants and especially biosurfactants will continue to be used and further developed to be used more and with better results for improving oil recoveries as the science progresses.

 

 

References:

 

Advancements in Surfactant Carriers for Enhanced Oil Recovery: Mechanisms, Challenges, and Opportunities. Kelly C B Maia, Agatha Densy dos Santos Francisco, Mateus Perissé Moreira, Regina S V Nascimento, and Daniel Grasseschi. American Chemical Society. ACS Omega. 2024 July 22; 9 (35):36874–36903. Advancements in Surfactant Carriers for Enhanced Oil Recovery: Mechanisms, Challenges, and Opportunities - PMC

Improving surfactant flooding for heavy oil recovery using nano-emulsions: A combination of a nonionic and an anionic surfactant showed the most effective oil-washing efficiency. Hannah Daniel. AIP Publishing. April 10, 2026. Improving surfactant flooding for heavy oil recovery using nano-emulsions | Scilight | AIP Publishing

Review of the Application of Natural Surfactants in Enhanced Oil Recovery: State-of-the-Art and Perspectives. Sarkar Muheedin, Hama Abbas, Khaksar Manshad, and Jagar A. Ali. ACS Energy & Fuels. Vol 37/Issue 14. July 4, 2023. Review of the Application of Natural Surfactants in Enhanced Oil Recovery: State-of-the-Art and Perspectives | Energy & Fuels

Oil Industry, Remember this Word for Enhanced Performance: Biosurfactants: Why? Because Biosurfactants are the Future of Sustainable and More Effective Oil Recovery: The Basics of Surfactants. Locus Bio-Energy (website). Oil Industry, Remember This Word For Enhanced Performance: Biosurfactants | Locus Bio-Energy

On the effects of surfactant charge on interfacial stability in nano-emulsions. Wanying Wang, Zhe Li; Bobo Zhou; Yilu Zhao; Yulong Cheng; Xuesong Yang; Lei Wang; Yaowen Xing; Xiahui Gui. Physics of Fluids. Volume 38, Issue 3. March 2026. On the effects of surfactant charge on interfacial stability in nano-emulsions | Physics of Fluids | AIP Publishing

Emerging Contaminants in Surface and Groundwater in an Intensive Agro-Industrial Region in India: Assessed in New Study

      A November 2025 paper in the Journal of Hazardous Materials Advances explores emerging contaminants in surface and groundwater in an intensive agro-industrial region. In this case, the agro-industrial region studied is in India.

“This study monitored pesticides, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), and phthalates (PAEs) to assess spatial distribution, ecological and human health risks and source assessment in the surface and groundwater of Hindon River Basin, India.”

     The study was divided into five parts, as shown in the infographic below. 1) data collection, 2) pesticides leaching potential, 3) ecological health risk assessment, 4) health risk assessment, and 5) source apportionment.

     The study assessed the leaching potential of pesticides. The study area contains multiple partially treated agricultural and industrial wastewater discharges and polluted rivers, and these are definitively linked to the emerging contaminants detected. Declining local groundwater levels and flooding can also affect emergent contaminant levels.

     They assessed the type of pesticides with the highest leaching risks. They assessed the ecological risks of different pesticides that are widely used on rice, wheat, and sugarcane. Risks to aquatic organisms and fish were assessed.

     They also did a health risk assessment that included that ingestion was the highest risk, and phthalates were the highest risk chemicals.  

     The source apportionment section determined that the sources of the emerging contaminants included different local industries.

"The presence of PAEs was linked to textile-dyeing, paper and pulp, plastic molding, and widespread use of plasticizers, adhesives and coatings in the chemical industries. In contrast, PAHs presence reflected fossil fuel combustion, brick kiln operations, crop residues open burning, and vehicular traffic.”

 

References:

 

Emerging contaminants in surface and groundwater of an intensive agro-industrial region: Distribution, risks, and sources assessment. Kartik Jadav and Basant Yadav. Journal of Hazardous Materials Advances. Volume 20, November 2025, 100893. Emerging contaminants in surface and groundwater of an intensive agro-industrial region: Distribution, risks, and sources assessment - ScienceDirect

RNG Directly from Pre-Treated Sewage: New Method Offers Significantly More Efficient Anaerobic Digestion, Cuts Treatment Costs, Reduces CO Emissions, and Produces More RNG

     Researchers at Washington State University recently published in the Chemical Engineering Journal about a new bioreactor that improves the efficiency of converting raw sewage to biogas and processes it into renewable natural gas (RNG). Good News Network reports the very good results obtained when pre-treating the sewage sludge:

“When the researchers pretreated sludge collected from a nearby wastewater facility, they produced 200% more renewable natural gas compared to current practices—and cut the cost of disposal by nearly 50%.”

“This technology basically converts up to 80% of the sewage sludge into something valuable,” said Professor Birgitte Ahring of WSU’s School of Chemical Engineering and Bioengineering, and one of the authors of the paper.

     They explain that wastewater treatment is a major consumer of electricity, making up 3 to 4% of the electricity used in the U.S.  

“About half of the approximately 15,000 wastewater treatment plants in the U.S. use anaerobic digestion to reduce sewage waste and make biogas, but the process, in which microbes break down the waste, is inefficient and struggles to break down all the complex molecules in the sludge.”

     For their study, the researchers utilized pretreatment of the sewage sludge "at high temperature and pressure with oxygen added before the anaerobic digestion process. The small amount of oxygen under high-pressure conditions acts as a catalyst to break down the long polymer chains in the material.” That pretreatment step resulted in lowering the cost of sewage treatment from $494 to $253 per ton of dry solids.

     After pretreatment, the researchers utilized a novel bacterial strain and hydrogen to convert CO2 to methane. The result was a gas of high purity at 99% methane. They patented the bacterial strain and are now working on developing a larger demonstration pilot project.

“This approach not only enhances carbon conversion efficiency and methane yield but also enables direct production of pipeline-quality renewable natural gas with minimal CO2 content — addressing two major limitations of existing sludge-to-energy systems into a single, scalable methodology,” said Ahring.

“By successfully bridging advanced pretreatment with biological biogas upgrading, this work provides a new, integrated paradigm for sustainable sludge treatment maximizing energy recovery while contributing to the circular bio-economy.”

     As the abstract notes, the Advanced Pretreatment and Anaerobic Digestion (APAD) processes resulted in increasing the carbon conversion efficiency to 83%, and the RNG output increased by a whopping 200%. 

     CO2 often makes up 35-40% of the biogas stream. Conventional anaerobic digestion pretreatment results in a mere 40% carbon conversion efficiency, so this is a huge improvement. If the process can be perfected and commercialized, it could have huge implications for reducing the costs of wastewater treatment and RNG production at these plants. Of course, it would also cut the carbon emissions of these facilities significantly in two ways. One way is by reducing the energy required for treatment. The other is by converting the CO2 to methane instead of flaring it or venting it into the atmosphere.  

“The biogas yield from conventional anaerobic digestion is often insufficient to justify energy recovery investments, resulting in routine flaring. WWTFs that operate AD systems and want to add biogas to the natural gas grid must first purify the biogas, removing CO2 (35–40%) to meet quality standards for renewable natural gas (RNG). Increased conversion of sludge solids into biogas will reduce the disposal burden of biosolids. Additionally, improving the quality of the biogas will avoid flaring it. If the biogas is not used for electricity production, then it can be upgraded to RNG and injected into the natural gas grid.”

     The schematic and flow chart below show the basic process of the APAD processes.

     The process involves taking dewatered anaerobically digested sewage sludge (DADSS) and pretreating it in the bioreactor, which is shown below. The process is known as Advanced Wet oxidation & Steam Explosion pretreatment (AWOEx). The biogas is upgraded to RNG in a trickle-bed bioreactor. Both processes are combined in the same bioreactor.

     Some figures from the paper are given below showing these stellar results.

     If this process is scaled up, it could result in great savings for wastewater treatment plants, increased RNG production, and a huge reduction in the carbon footprint of the plants.

     The conclusion of the paper, given below, summarizes the results.

 

 References:

 

Researchers Develop Way to Get Natural Gas That’s Renewable Directly From Sewage. Good News Network. April 25, 2026. Researchers Develop Way to Get Natural Gas That’s Renewable Directly From Sewage

Improving anaerobic digestion of sewage sludge to renewable natural gas by the Advanced Pretreatment & Anaerobic Digestion technology (APAD): Pilot testing. Birgitte K. Ahring, Fuad Ale Enriquez, Muhammad Usman Khan, Peter Valdez, Francesca Pierobon, Timothy E. Seiple, and Richard Garrison. Chemical Engineering Journal. Volume 531, 1 March 2026, 173931. Improving anaerobic digestion of sewage sludge to renewable natural gas by the Advanced Pretreatment & Anaerobic Digestion technology (APAD): Pilot testing - ScienceDirect

American Lung Association State of the Air 2025 Report: Summary & Review: 44% of U.S. Population Lives in Areas with Unhealthy Air Quality Due to Ozone and Particulate Pollution

      The American Lung Association’s ‘State of the Air’ 2025 Report is out, and one of its most startling conclusions is that about 44% of Americans, or 152.3 million people, are living in places with unhealthy levels of ozone or particulate pollution. The report focuses mainly on those two types of pollution: particulate matter (specifically PM 2.5) and ozone. The report is an annual one that began in 2000.

     The report stresses that ozone and particulate levels vary considerably across regions and that some regions are much more vulnerable to these types of pollution due to things like weather inversions keeping the air closer to the ground for longer periods. Variable wind speeds and directions also affect air pollution exposure. The report notes that there is an environmental justice component to the issue since more “people of color” are exposed (54%) than their percentage of the population (42%). The report also notes that wildfires contribute significantly to particulate pollution, as well as pollution from NOx, VOCs, and more, especially as prevailing weather patterns disperse them over different nearby regions.

     The map below shows which states gained and lost emissions and by how much. The West, especially California, consistently has the worst air quality from these pollutants.

     The report provides lots of information about how ozone is formed by sunlight reacting with NOx and VOCs, and how ozone and particulate pollution affect human health. Children, the elderly, pregnant mothers, and people with health issues are the most at risk. The report recommends more staff, funding, and enforcement actions for air pollution regulation and enforcement.

     The report tabulates data for selected counties in all 50 U.S. states and Puerto Rico. That data includes instances of high-ozone days and high particulate pollution days. The graphs below show the cities in the U.S. most polluted by ozone, daily PM, and annual PM, respectively.

          The graph below shows that the number of days of unhealthy particulate pollution continues to rise. This is concerning.

     The report notes its objectives below, as well as the Air Quality Index (AGI) grading system and the report’s county grading system.

“For this report, the objective was to identify the number of days that 8-hour daily maximum concentrations in each county occurred within the defined ranges. This approach provided an indication of the level of pollution for all monitored days, not just those days that fell under the requirements for attaining the national ambient air quality standards. Therefore, no data capture criteria were applied to eliminate monitoring sites or to require a number of valid days for the ozone season.”

References:

 

Key Findings: Learn the key findings and overall air quality trends in the American Lung Association's latest "State of the Air" report. American Lung Association. 2026. Key Findings | State of the Air | American Lung Association

State of the Air. 2025 Report. American Lung Association. 2026. State-of-the-Air-2025.pdf

 

 

South Korean Scientists Develop a ‘Gas Battery’ That Combines Carbon Capture, NOx Pollution Abatement, and It Generates Electricity: A Step Closer to Self-Powered Capture and Abatement

     Scientists in South Korea have built a device that captures carbon, abates NOx pollution, and generates small amounts of electricity. The device directly converts the energy generated during gas adsorption into electricity. The prototype, known as the Gas Capture and Electricity Generator (GCEG), is composed of carbon-based electrodes and hydrogel materials. More specifically, it has “a carbon black-coated mulberry paper electrode with a dip-coated polyacrylamide hydrogel.” The structure of the device enables selective gas adsorption and voltage generation. Essentially, the atmospheric pollutants (NOx and CO2) are utilized as fuel to generate small but continuous amounts of electricity.

     According to an article in The Independent:

“Upon exposure to 50 parts per million of nitrous oxide, researchers say the generator delivers 0.8 volts and 55 microamperes of power.”

“While the energy generated is small, it can be scaled up to 3.8 volts and 140 microamperes via “series and parallel integration”, enough to power some wearables and environmental monitors, researchers say.

“By integrating gas capture and electricity generation within a single self-powered platform, this approach provides a scalable, low-energy pathway for mitigating multiple greenhouse gases,” the study noted.

“Scientists hope the technology can be further developed for use in smart environmental sensors, battery-free devices connected to the internet, and in industrial facilities where large volumes of emissions are generated.”

     Since most carbon capture devices and systems require significant energy inputs to operate, this device could eliminate (some?) of those requirements. The new device, according to TechXplore:

“…directly converts the physicochemical energy generated during gas adsorption on electrode surfaces into electrical energy.”

“This technology is expected to be widely applicable in self-powered smart environmental sensors, battery-free IoT systems, and industrial facilities where large volumes of emissions are generated. In such settings, it could enable simultaneous energy harvesting and carbon reduction.”

     The paper was published in the journal Energy and Environmental Science. Its abstract notes that the mechanism for chemical reactions is via changes to hydrogen bonds:

“…hydrogen-bond-driven gas–hydrogel interactions govern the energy harvesting mechanism.”

     The figure below shows how the small voltages in the demo were combined when up to 25 GCEG devices were placed in a gas chamber.

     This device, or something similar, has the potential to revolutionize carbon capture and NOx abatement, but it must be stressed that the tech is at an early stage, in this case, the ‘proof-of-concept’ stage. Much more engineering needs to be done to stabilize, scale up, and optimize the device. As the paper’s conclusions, given in full below, notes, the gas/gel-based chemical reactions are now proven to be able to be designed to produce usable energy:

“As a proof-of-concept platform, the present GCEG prioritizes validation of the gas–gel interaction-driven mechanism over full optimization of operational stability and reversibility.”

 

  

References:

 

New 'gas battery' turns noxious pollutants into electricity. Vishwam Sankaran. The Independent. April 21, 2026. New 'gas battery' turns noxious pollutants into electricity

This 'gas battery' turns CO₂ and NOₓ pollution into electricity while cleaning the air. Science X staff. TechXplore. April 20, 2026. This 'gas battery' turns CO₂ and NOₓ pollution into electricity while cleaning the air

Electrical power generation from asymmetric greenhouse gas capture. Tae Gwang Yun, Yejin Lee, Joonchul Shin, Dong Ho Lee, Min Taek Hong, Seonghun Lee, Sang-Joon Kim, Hyun Ji Lee, Jiwon Lee, Gyeongrok Min, Seunghyun Weon, Minho Choi, Ho Won Jang, Han Seul Kim, and Ji-Soo Jang. Energy & Environmental Science. Issue 7. 2026. Electrical power generation from asymmetric greenhouse gas capture - Energy & Environmental Science (RSC Publishing)