Tiny land pioneers 🌱 might have had a BIG impact on Earth's climate millions of years. Go through this post to learn more!

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As shown in figure 13.58, this is an enormous chemical reactor in which heating, reduction and purification occur together.

"Chemistry" 2e - Blackman, A., Bottle, S., Schmid, S., Mocerino, M., Wille, U.

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New technique can capture or reuse CO2 as a chemical source for the production of sustainable plastics

A team led by chemists at the University of Liège has developed a new polyurethane production technique using CO2 to create new types of easily recyclable plastics. The study, published in the Journal of the American Chemistry Society, could provide a solution for the development of truly sustainable plastics. Commodity plastics have transformed global industry. Whether in construction, clothing, vehicles or food packaging, these plastics are everywhere in our daily lives, so much so that their global use has been estimated at around 460 million tons in 2019. "This number is staggering, but not surprising, because plastics, also known as synthetic polymers, have met a large success thanks to their irreplaceable characteristics: they are light, cheap and incredibly versatile," explains Christophe Detrembleur, chemist at the Center for Education and Research on Macromolecules (CERM) of the University of Liège. "However, the fact that they are difficult to recycle, or even impossible to recycle in the case of thermosets, has serious consequences."

Nickel-laden black gold converts CO2 to chemicals using solar energy and green hydrogen

CO2 hydrogenation with green hydrogen is one of the best processes to combat climate change and can provide a single solution to three challenging problems, 1) excessive CO2 levels, 2) the temporal mismatch between solar electricity production and demand, and 3) hydrogen gas storage. However, the CO2 hydrogenation reaction needs very high temperatures, causing quick deactivation of the catalyst.

In new work published in ACS Nano, researchers at Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), Mumbai, asked the question of whether this high-temperature CO2hydrogenation can be catalyzed at room to moderate temperature via plasmonic excitation of H2 and CO2 using plasmonic catalyst. They have demonstrated that plasmonic black gold-nickel efficiently catalyzes CO2 hydrogenation using visible light.

The reaction took place as low as 84 to 223°C without external heating. Researchers found a multifold increase in the catalytic activity as compared to DPC-C4 to the extent that measurable photoactivity was only observed with DPC-C4-Ni. It showed the best-reported CO production rate of 2464± 40 mmol gNi-1 h-1 and selectivity greater than 95% in the flow conditions. The catalyst showed extraordinary stability (100 h).