Methane and carbon dioxide can be stored in 'bioclathrate' form-that is, as a clathrate supported in a biological structure-by using plants or fungi to greatly accelerate clathrate formation kinetics, thus avoiding the use of energy-intensive mixing technologies or petrochemically derived materials.

Biogenic silica nanoparticles were synthesized using rice husks (RHs) as the raw material via controlled pyrolysis. The characterization results showed that the morphology of the synthesized silica was highly related to the pretreatment of RHs and the pyrolysis conditions. Particularly, potassium cations in RHs were found to catalyze the melting of silica, during which the amorphous silica were converted to crystalline phase. Two hours of pyrolysis at 700 °C appeared to be ideal to synthesize silica nanoparticles with a diameter of ca. 20–30 nm. Higher temperature and longer duration of pyrolysis led to undesired melting of silica nanoparticles, while too low a temperature cannot effectively remove carbonous residues. Such amorphous silica nanoparticles with narrow size distribution and high purity are expected to replace silica gel and fumed silica for various applications.