University of New South Wales chemists develop way to bind methane

In Australia, University of New South Wales chemists have engineered a new molecular “vice,” by including the rare metal osmium, that can bind methane for hours—providing crucial evidence for an intermediate step that will inform new catalysts to store, transport, or transform the gas into methanol and help to avert wastage of the gas worldwide. 

This new “osmium-methane” complex can bind methane—better known as natural gas—for hours, much longer than the current standard of microseconds, allowing for its analysis to create potential new catalysts to transform methane.