Saturday, April 18, 2009
2:03 PM
Energy/Alternative Energy
On Thursday, scientists at the state-backed Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology in Singapore issued a statement declaring that they had found a way to turn CO2, the chemical believed to be the primary cause of global warming, into clean-burning methanol. While this has been attempted before, this new process is said to use significantly less energy than previous attempts. The team of scientists used several nontoxic organocatalysts, such as N-heterocyclic carbenes (NHCs) and hydrosilane, a combination of silica and hydrogen, to create the biofuel ethanol. The statement said that the reaction between NHCs and carbon dioxide can occur under mild conditions in dry air, and only a small amount of the catalyst is necessary. Hydrosilane, when combined with carbon dioxide, creates a reduction reaction which can be efficiently catalyzed by NHCs even at room temperature. This is a major breakthrough in the realm of biofuel production; previous attempts to turn CO2 into clean energy sources have required much higher energy input and longer reaction time. Through the discovery of this new process, this team of scientists has effectively taken the fight against climate change to an entirely new level; it is conceivable that this new process could be scaled up to capture and transform some of the billions of tons of carbon dioxide produced annually by the burning of fossil fuels.
This is a very important step forward in the clean energy revolution as well as the fight against climate change. We now have the ability to effectively kill two birds with one stone: this process can be used simultaneously to combat the effects of global warming by reducing our massive carbon output and solve the worsening energy crisis. This is exactly the kind of ideas and research that the world needs, ideas that can solve many of the problems we are facing at once. This is particularly important in terms of energy and the environment, two issues that are intrinsically tied to one another; two issues that have to be addressed at the same time. Hopefully we can see some further research into methods such as these---at present, the actual technology to capture and transform carbon dioxide doesn't actually exist. But this team has made a huge step toward the genesis of that inevitable technology; we now have the science down to an art.
http://www.reuters.com/article/GCA-GreenBusiness/idUSTRE53F2S820090416
1 comment:
this is great because we can help to problems at the same time, we can find use for all the co2 that we create and convert it into a clean burning fuel, which will eventually lead to a cleaner world. This is a great step, lets just hope that they find a way to promote it, so that everybody can take adavantage of it
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