शाश्वतम्, प्रकृति-मानव-सङ्गतम्,
सङ्गतं खलु शाश्वतम्।
तत्त्व-सर्वं धारकं
सत्त्व-पालन-कारकं
वारि-वायु-व्योम-वह्नि-ज्या-गतम्।
शाश्वतम्, प्रकृति-मानव-सङ्गतम्।।
Meaning :- The relationship between nature and man is eternal. The relationship is eternal.
Water, air, all the elements of the sky, fire and earth are actually holders and sustainer of living beings.
Heat waves are trending nowadays and boiling the living identities also affecting the non living identities. Reasons can be cited as enormous amount of carbon emissions by vehicles, industries, households etc. therefore innovative ways need to be searched that can convert such massive carbon emissions as a friendly compounds to the environment, which can be saviour and useful to our atmosphere.
Carbon Dioxide - is an untapped resource that illegally or legally are emitted by the Industries. A biggest contributor of greenhouse gas and global warming, this can be collected and can be transformed to some valuable chemicals.
In a collaborative project involving the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory, Northern Illinois University and Valparaiso University, scientists mentioned a family of catalysts that efficiently converts CO2 into ethanol, acetic acid or formic acid. These liquid hydrocarbons are among the most usable chemicals and can be used in manufacturing many commercial products. For example, ethanol is a key ingredient in numerous products as a solvent, in the manufacture of other organic compounds, and as an additive to automobile fuel (a mixture known as gasohol). Ethanol is a major industrial chemical. The intoxicating portion in many alcoholic drinks, such as beer, wine, and distilled spirits, is ethanol. Acetic acid is used in the manufacture of acetic anhydride, cellulose acetate, vinyl acetate monomer, acetic esters, chloracetic acid, plastics, dyes, insecticides, photographic chemicals, and rubber. Formic acid has a wide range of uses: in leather tanning, as a decalcifier and cleaning product, as a chemical reducing agent, as a preservative in animal feeds, and for manufacturing its salts and esters.
Quoted from Research -->
Modulating CO2 Electrocatalytic Conversion to the Organics Pathway by the Catalytic Site Dimension :-
Electrochemical reduction of carbon dioxide to organic chemicals provides a value-added route for mitigating greenhouse gas emissions. We report a family of carbon-supported Sn electrocatalysts with the tin size varying from single atom, ultrasmall clusters to nanocrystallites. High single-product Faradaic efficiency (FE) and low onset potential of CO2 conversion to acetate (FE = 90% @ −0.6 V), ethanol (FE = 92% @ −0.4 V), and formate (FE = 91% @ −0.6 V) were achieved over the catalysts of different active site dimensions. The CO2 conversion mechanism behind these highly selective, size-modulated p-block element catalysts was elucidated by structural characterization and computational modeling, together with kinetic isotope effect investigation.
Tin metal deposited over a carbon support are the important characteristic of catalysts to be used.
"If fully developed, this catalysts could convert the CO2 produced at various industrial sources to valuable chemicals
The method od used by the team is called electrocatalytic conversion, meaning that CO2 conversion over a catalyst is driven by electricity. By changing the size of tin used from single atom to ultra small clusters and also to bigger nano-crystallites, this can regulates the conversion of Carbon Dioxide to acetic acid, ethanol and formic acid, respectively. Selectivity for each of these chemicals was 90% or higher. "The observation of a changing reaction path by the catalyst size is unprecedented."
Computational and experimental studies revealed several insights into the reaction mechanisms forming the three hydrocarbons. One significant insight is that the reaction path completely changes when the ordinary water used in the conversion so is switched by deuterated water (deuterium is an isotope of hydrogen). This phenomenon is known as the kinetic isotope effect. It has never been previously observed in CO2 conversion.
Hard X ray beams are used to capture the chemical and electronic structures of the tin based catalysts with different loadings to tin. With the help of transmission electron microscope at CNM, an image of the arrangement of tin atoms from single atoms to small clusters with the different catalyst loadings can be recorded with the high spatial resolution.
Comments