catalysts for change

I grew up in sight and smelling distance of - not to mention fed by a salary paid by - a major petrochemical site, so I do have a tiny bit of sentimental attachment to this industry. However, if I look at the flow diagrams of what the industry produces, it strikes me that they represent an huge one-way track leading from fossil resources to products of limited lifetime to waste that may persist in the environment for much longer than the products were used, along with carbon dioxide that contributes to climate change.

Considering the limits on our planetary resources and the impact of waste on the environment, we are now all well aware that it would be better if that flow diagram looked more like a roundabout and less like a highway to hell. There are many ideas how to reuse this or recycle that, but considering the gigantic scale of that one-way system from resource to waste, they have limited chances of changing the big picture. Thus I was thrilled to learn that chemists at the NSF-funded “Center for Enabling New Technologies through Catalysis” (CENTC) are addressing the problem on a bigger scale by developing new catalysts for industry and combining known catalysts in new reaction schemes, gradually redesigning the way the world makes chemical products.

The resulting feature is out now:

Catalysis quest
Chemistry & Industry
Volume 80, Issue 2, pages 36–39, 2016
DOI: 10.1002/cind.802_16.x

abstract and restricted access to the full text

(I can send PDF files of the pages on request.)

Sneak preview of the first page - for reasons explained above I love the illustration:

how to design new enzymes

Scientists are now able to design new enzymes to catalyse reactions for which a natural enzyme doesn't exist. I've rounded up some of the first success stories in enzyme design for my latest feature which is out now:

Evolving new types of enzymes

Current Biology, Volume 23, Issue 6, R214-R217, 18 March 2013

doi:10.1016/j.cub.2013.02.054

Free access to

HTML text

PDF

silk and prizes

The roundup of German pieces for December includes a polymer science perspective on spider silk, a detailed look at this year's Nobel prize for chemistry (Heck reaction and similar couplings using palladium catalysts) and a look back over 20 years of the coveted IgNobel prizes in chemistry. The spiders even made it to the cover of Nachrichten:



Blickpunkt Biowissenschaften: Spinnenseide aus Sicht der Polymerforschung. Nachrichten aus der Chemie 59, 1250

Ausgeforscht: Was ist eigentlich Chemie? Nachrichten aus der Chemie 59, 1225

Verknüpfung von Kohlenstoffatomen mittels Palladium Spektrum der Wissenschaft Nr 12, 18 [free access]

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stop flaring

One of the major unsung crimes against our planet is flaring -- i.e. the process of burning off unwanted natural gas in an open and entirely useless flame, technically known as a flare. According to World Bank figures, 5.25 trillion cubic feet (tcf) of associated gas – the equivalent of 25% of US gas consumption – was flared in 2004 (http://tinyurl.com/Flare-Gas-Stats). This happens all around the globe in remote oil fields where capturing and transporting the gas would be uneconomical.

The Oxford University spinout company Oxford Catalysts, together with the microchannel reactor specialists Velocys Inc. has developed a microchannel reactor involving Fischer-Tropsch catalysis (see my earlier feature in Oxford Today) offering an economically attractive way of converting stranded gas into liquid fuel in situ, thus cutting down the flaring.

Velocys has announced this week that a joint demonstration testing agreement (JDTA) has been settled between Velocys, Inc., offshore facility developers, MODEC, the global engineering firm Toyo Engineering, and the Brazilian State oil company Petrobras to build and operate a microchannel GTL (Gas To Liquid) demonstration facility. The companies hope that this agreement will bring the prospect of routine offshore production of liquid fuel from stranded gas a step closer to reality.

The 5-10 barrel/day (bbl/d) demonstration facility will include a microchannel steam methane reformer (SMR) along with a microchannel Fischer-Tropsch (FT) reactor. The demonstration plant, which is expected to be up and running by early 2011, will be constructed by Toyo Engineering with support from MODEC and installed at the Petrobas facility in Fortaleza, Brazil. The FT and SMR microchannel reactors will be fabricated by Kobe Steel Ltd.

Following successful demonstration, this technology is expected to be used by MODEC, Toyo and Velocys on the commercial floating production, storage and offloading vessels (FPSOs) used in the development of offshore oil and gas fields.

synthetic fuel revisited

There is a brilliant catalytic process that can turn almost anything, from natural gas through to biomass and waste, into liquid fuels that can be used in cars, for instance. The process was invented by Fischer and Tropsch in the 1920s, and there is only one thing wrong with it: fuel made from crude oil has been cheaper than synthetic fuel in most places, most of the time.

Therefore, the history of Fischer-Tropsch visits some unpopular regimes, including Nazi Germany and Apartheid South Africa, and it perks up each time there is an oil shortage. The fact that it can be used with a very wide range of feedstocks, from stranded gas to solid waste, has now given the method a new lease of life, with green considerations (rather than political isolation) now being the main driving force.

I wrote a feature article about Fischer Tropsch revival for Chemistry & Industry, which is out today:

Catalysis: Liquid fuel revival
Chemistry & Industry No.22, 23 November 2009, pp 21-23

It should soon turn up online here -- not sure whether it will be open access, though.

methanol fuel cells revisited

Back in February 2008, I wrote a news item about nitrogen-doped carbon nanotubes coated with platinum nanoparticles as electrodes in methanol fuel cells. Now the lead author, Zheng Hu, tells me that in the follow-up work, due to be published in Advanced Materials this week, the team at Nanjing University has made significant progress in three aspects:

* Instead of using pure platinum as the coating, the researchers can now work with Pt-Co alloys, which reduces the cost of the device.

* They can now also apply their electrocatalysts to the cathode reaction, so they could run an entire fuel cell based on this technology.

* They have developed a simple preparation process for the catalysts.

The authors hope that their material will be useful not just in fuel cells but also in other electrochemical applications.


PS the original research communication appears to have been delayed somewhat, but is now out:

Published Online: Sep 15 2009 8:49AM
DOI: 10.1002/adma.200900677
[PDF]

catalysing a greener future

Earlier this year, fellow science writer Nina Morgan organised a very interesting visit to the Oxford spinout company Oxford Catalysts, which is developing clever solutions for all kinds of problems, from the production of second-generation biofuels down to the removal of chewing gum from pavements.*

My impressions are now online in the latest edition of Oxford Today.

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* read the box "steaming ahead" to find out how catalysts can help with the chewing gum problem!