from graphene to stanene

Graphene - a single layer of graphitic carbon - has caused some excitement in recent years, but there's always the slight inconvenience that it is an "always-on" conductor rather than a switchable material of the semiconductor type. This problem has motivated a lot of research into graphene analogues and derivatives, both on a carbon basis and on the basis of elements that share some of its properties due to being near carbon in the periodic table.

In my latest feature I have looked at graphene analogues using other elements, including carbon's neighbours boron and nitrogen, as well as its fellow group IV elements silicon, germanium, and tin (whose honeycomb layers are known as silicene, germanene and stanene, respectively). The feature appears in the September issue of Chemistry & Industry:

Stanene, the next miracle material?

Chemistry & Industry issue 9, pp 24-27.

I'm afraid it's premium content, but give me a shout if you want a PDF "reprint".

On page 51 of the same issue, there is also my review of the "Handbook of cellulosic ethanol", ditto.

A model of graphene. Image source.

october harvest

The monthly roundup of things published in German magazines yields algal biofuels, mind-altering drugs and mysterious mechanisms:

Forschungspolitik: Drogengesetze schaden Neurowissenschaften
Chemie in unserer Zeit 47, 284 DOI: 10.1002/ciuz.201390056 restricted access

Biosprit aus Algen?
Nachrichten aus der Chemie 2013, 61, 1035-1036

Ausgeforscht: Struktur und Funktion
Nachrichten aus der Chemie 2013, 61, p1083

The last item was inspired by the historical scientific instrument of unknown function shown below. There is a competition on for the best explanation of what it might be for.

PS: My feature on diatoms will appear in the next issue of Chemie in unserer Zeit (December) but it is already online (restricted access).

german pieces in June

exoplanets, synthetic fuels, ESR spectroscopy, and the double life of Dicer, it's all in a month's output:

Astrochemie: Chemie ferner Planeten
Chemie in unserer Zeit vol 44, No. 3, p. 166-167

Biochemie: Häcksler bekommt Nebenjob
Chemie in unserer Zeit vol 44, No. 3, p. 171

Ausgeforscht Traumreisen in ferne Welten
Nachrichten aus der Chemie vol 58, No. 6, p.633

Kraftstoffe Fischer-Tropsch-Synthese: Wiederkehr im grünen Gewand
Nachrichten aus der Chemie vol 58, No. 6, p.653

Blickpunkt Biowissenschaften ESR-Spektroskopie: Was der Spin verrät
Nachrichten aus der Chemie vol 58, No. 6, p.659

biofuels etc.

In the current issue of Chemistry & Industry (No. 10, page 30), there is my review of the book:

Biocatalysis and Bioenergy by Ching T. Hou and Jei-Fu Shaw, eds.
J.Wiley, 2008

which is essentially a volume of conference proceedings about biofuels and other biological resources.

Here's a snippet:

This monograph, emerging from a conference held in Taiwan in 2006, assembles reviews mainly on bioethanol, biodiesel, and other products made either with biocatalysts or from renewable resources. The latter comprise about half the length of the book, leaving a third of the space for diesel and just a sixth for bioethanol. In marked contrast to the public debates over biofuels, food, and climate change, these research reviews are very much from the grassroots of the field, giving even the smallest technical problems due attention.

towards better biofuels

I've written a feature article on second generation biofuels (i.e. those that make use of waste materials or at least of whole plants as opposed to edible parts of food crops), which is out in the May issue of Education in Chemistry and on open access.

The story also made it onto the cover of the magazine:

cracking cellulose

Combining two known approaches, solid acids and ionic liquids as solvents, Ferdi Schueth's group at MPI Muelheim has succeeded in depolymerizing cellulose even from wood, an important first step in the production of so-called second generation biofuels from inedible plant materials such as agricultural waste and wood.

Read my story in Chemistry World.

fuel from waste

While some politicians are still struggling to understand that biofuels derived from purpose-grown crops such as corn are a bad idea, a company in Germany, Choren Industries, has already finished building a refinery for second-generation biofuels, which will be made from agricultural waste.

Intriguing thing about this story is that it is based on technology that the GDR developed for entirely different purpose (turning coal into fuel to be independent of oil imports), but which comes in extremely handy today.

My news feature about this appears in today's issue of Current Biology (limited access).

biofuels from waste materials

As the hype around farmed biofuels (such as corn ethanol) turns to autocombustion, it is important to remember that there is another way, namely to make biofuels from agricultural waste materials. As these materials will be of different nature in different climate zones, many different approaches are needed around the globe.

In Cuba, for instance, the major agricultural waste is bagasse from sugar cane. Researchers are developing ways of "cracking" cellulose in the bagasse in order to produce bioethanol. A recent paper from the university of Matanzas has looked at the best way of doing this pretreatment:

Martín, C., Marcet, M., and Thomsen, A. B. (2008). "Comparison between wet oxidation and steam explosion as pretreatment methods for enyzmatic hydrolysis of sugarcane bagasse," BioRes. 3(3), 670-683.

The full text of the paper should soon appear in BioResources.

rob the poor to fuel the rich

biofuels have fallen from grace with alarming speed. What looked like the future of transport a year ago is now seen as a threat to food provision and the environment alike. Today's issue of Current Biology contains a few news features on these problems, and I've written the one on the impact of biofuels on African countries. Apologies for the title which I didn't choose or approve.

biofuel debate

The only sustainable biofuel is used chip fat, concludes George Monbiot in his latest Guardian column. While I agree with him on most things, I wouldn't go quite as far as that (yet). While not all biofuel programs based on agricultural waste are truly green (he cites an example of waste that would normally be scattered on the fields and help to avoid erosion), there are lots of different kinds of agricultural waste in different parts of the world, and I am sure that for some of them it makes perfectly green sense to turn them into biofuel. Such as the bagasse, a waste product of sugar cane, which the Cubans are turning into ethanol. Or wood chips in Scandinavia.

I think these need to be considered one by one, even though the one green option that is available to all people in all places, is to use less fuel. But that, of course, runs counter to the economic growth that we are so addicted to.

a green solution

When I was asked to do this story about biofuels produced from algae, I thought there wasn't that much going on in this field. But I was wrong, there is a lot going on, and the algal approach, abandoned by the DoE a decade ago, is alive and kicking. The USP is that you can farm algae practically anywhere on the planet, including on desert land. And they grow fast.

Read my story in Current Biology.

going nuts

Recently I mentioned the science writer colleague who tried to run a bank. To continue the informal series "crazy career moves":

Earlier this year I interviewed Powderject cofounder Brian Bellhouse for a feature in Oxford Today about Biomedical Engineering. He mentioned his company co-founder and son in law, Paul Drayson, telling me in an amused tone that Paul, now Lord Drayson, left the Biotech revolution in order to buy battleships and aircraft carriers for the government. And I thought that was crazy.

Yesterday, Drayson was reported to have resigned from his government post in order to develop his motor racing career and try to win the 24 hours of Le Mans. Oh, and he wants to do that using biofuel, too. Here's his resignation letter and the report in the Guardian, and the relevant wikipedia page.

Now that leaves me feeling really frustrated and way too normal. But then again it is easier to go nuts when you have a nice fortune to fall back on ...

green fuel turning black

Further insights into the problems caused by the rush for biofuels produced from specially grown crops are to be found in George Monbiot's latest column.

As I understand it, all efforts should be directed towards gaining biofuels from abundant agricultural waste material (straw in Canada, sawdust in Sweden, sugar cane bagasse in Cuba). The current government-promoted gold-rush into fuel crops is inefficient at best and quite probably damaging in lots of ways.