Sustainable chemistry: Researchers develop method to reduce carbon footprint of chemical industry

An efficient way to hydrogenate nitrogen-containing aromatic compounds

09-Oct-2024 - Successful reduction of the chemical manufacturing industry’s environmental impact relies on finding a greener way to make the chemical building blocks for common and massively consumed compounds. It’s no secret manufacturing processes have some of the most impactful and intense effects on the ...

Pioneering plasma-catalytic process for CO2 hydrogenation to methanol under ambient conditions

14-Aug-2024 - Researchers at the University of Liverpool have achieved a significant milestone in the conversion of carbon dioxide (CO2) into valuable fuels and chemicals, marking an important step towards a sustainable net-zero economy. In a paper, the team reports a pioneering plasma-catalytic process for ...

From Climate Gas to Raw Material

DFG Focus on Green Chemistry under Fluctuating Conditions

22-Sep-2023 - Wouldn't that be an elegant solution: to use the substance that is most damaging to the climate and threatens the future as a raw material for economic goods and everyday items? In fact, carbon dioxide (CO2), an unavoidable byproduct of civilization, is already being used in the laboratory to ...

Watching a Bimetallic Catalytic Surface in Action

Such insight on working catalysts is only possible to obtain using state-of-the-art experimental techniques under reaction conditions

01-Sep-2023 - A team of researchers from the Department of Interface Science at the Fritz Haber Institute of the Max Planck Society addressed the question: what happens to a Ga-promoted Cu surface under reaction conditions required for the synthesis of methanol? They found complex structural transformations of ...

Primeval Reaction Pathways

Some reactions in the reverse Krebs cycle can also be run under meteorite catalysis

25-Nov-2022 - Naturally occurring chemical reactions may have evolved into the biochemical processes we know today. A team of researchers has now discovered that a reaction sequence from the so-called reverse Krebs cycle—a fundamental biochemical process—can also take place without enzymes. The team writes in ...

Direct conversion of carbon dioxide into bulk chemicals and liquid fuels

30-Aug-2022 - High-efficiency utilization of CO2 facilitates the reduction of CO2 concentration in the global atmosphere and hence the alleviation of the greenhouse effect. The chemical utilization of CO2, which refers to converting CO2 into value-added chemicals and liquid fuels, has a distinct and direct CO2 ...

Caught in the act: Key chemical intermediates in pollutant-to-fuel reaction identified

Such work will help convert an atmospheric pollutant into fuel for vehicles, and chemical feedstocks for industry

11-Jul-2022 - Researchers from the University of Tsukuba and collaborating partners experimentally measured hydrogenation of metal-adsorbed formate. This development will facilitate practical conversion of carbon dioxide pollutant into methanol fuel. Carbon dioxide pollution continues to change the global ...

Fuel from waste wood

Possibility to produce ethanol on a financially competitive and technically efficient basis

31-Mar-2022 - According to the latest assessment report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a considerable reduction in CO2 emissions is required to limit the consequences of climate change. Producing fuel from renewable sources such as waste wood and straw or renewable electricity would be one ...

Novel synergistic single-atom catalyst approach breaks activity limitation of predecessors

While the developed synergistic catalyst does not erase the need for noble metals, it does reduce the amount needed for a better reaction

28-Mar-2022 - The key to chemical reactions is in the name — there needs to be something that causes the chemicals to react to one another. Called a catalyst, this component induces or speeds up reactions in a controlled manner to produce a desired outcome. The catalysts used in several industries are often ...

"Magic" combination for more effective hydrogenations

The activity of this “magic” combination came as a real surprise

06-Jan-2022 - Hydrogen (H2) is the smallest chemical molecule and a beacon of hope for a more environmentally friendly energy transition in the coming years. In addition, it is already used in a variety of industrial processes - so-called hydrogenations - for the environmentally friendly production of chemical ...