Queen’s University chemists are celebrating after winning three global awards for cutting-edge work to remove harmful mercury from natural gas.
The project by Queen’s University Ionic Liquid Laboratories (Quill), in collaboration with Malaysian oil and gas giant Petronas, was the major winner at the Institution of Chemical Engineers (IChemE) Awards.
As well as collecting the award for Outstanding Achievement in Chemical and Process Engineering, the team won the Sustainable Technology Award and Chemical Engineering Project of the year, making the best chemical engineering project for innovation in waste reduction.
The Quill and Petronas team were presented with their awards by The Apprentice star and Countdown host Nick Hewer at the awards ceremony in Bolton.
Quill scientists beat off competition from companies and universities around the globe to win the awards.
Their lab, the first of its kind in the world, developed a new ionic liquid material to remove mercury from natural gas.
The award-winning technology, developed by Quill at Queen’s, has been used to develop two commercial plants at Petronas gas terminals in Malaysia, which have been producing mercuryfree, sales-quality natural gas since November 2011.
Explaining the mercury removal technology, known as HycaPure Hg™, Professor Martin Atkins from Quill said: “This really is cutting-edge technology, and we are delighted that it has been recognised on the world-stage by IChemE.
“Mercury is one of the biggest threats to downstream processing in the oil and gas exploration industries, so it is a huge problem for companies like Petronas.
“It contaminates natural gas, corrodes processing equipment, and compromises the safety of processing plants and the quality of the end product.
It’s incredibly difficult to manage.”