Byline:  Garry Barker
Australian scientists have won a prestigious award from the powerful US Environment Protection Agency for developing a technology that eliminates the use of the world's most harmful greenhouse gas.
The lethal gas, sulphur hexafluoride, or SF6, is used in making magnesium die-castings, increasingly important in the automotive industry, mobile phone manufacture and many other applications requiring strength and low weight.

Ian Hartnell, chief executive of Advanced Magnesium Technology, the Brisbane company that developed the technology in collaboration with the Co-operative Research Centre for Cast Metals, said the US EPA award provided the international recognition needed to begin global marketing.
The commercial potential is huge because the use of SF6 has been banned by the European Union with effect from January 1, 2007.
AMT and the Cast Metals CRC have a world patent over their discovery and have already begun selling licences for its use.
Ironically, the use of SF6 has increased in recent years, because of pressure on car makers to improve the fuel consumption of their vehicles, in part by reducing weight.
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Environmental experts say the technology has the potential to reduce greenhouse gas effects by the equivalent of 5 million tonnes of CO2 a year, equivalent to eliminating the emissions of 1 million cars.
SF6 is used to "cloak" the molten magnesium as it pours into a mould at a temperature of nearly 700 degrees Celsius and stop it from bursting into flame.
After a casting has been made, the gas escapes into the atmosphere, where it can last for more than 3000 years.
Scientists say it has a global warming potential 22,000 times greater than that of carbon dioxide.
Gordon Dunlop, one of the scientists who worked on the project, said the solution involved using another potentially dangerous greenhouse gas, a hydrofluorocarbon, but doing so in a way that avoided its environmental effects.
"With our technology, the HFC is destroyed in the process of protecting the magnesium inside the die," he said.