Nanotechnology contributes to traditional energy industries, especially the petrochemical - oil, gas, and olefin (plastics) production as well as for fuels and lubricants. Advanced Energy Consortium at the University of Texas at Austin (AEC) plans to develop subsurface nanosensors that can be injected into oil and gas wells. These sensors would be forced out of wells, through the existing pore space and into the surrounding formation pore space. There they would collect the reservoir's physical characteristics, which could then be used for production optimization studies. Nanotech could revolutionize the natural gas industry, from production to processing to pollution reduction.
Nanomaterials are incorporated into a wide variety of hydrocarbon extraction, gas separations, solid-state gas sensors for air pollution monitoring, nanoadsorbent materials for environmental separations and corrosion inhibitors that are used in a broad range of gas industry markets.