The fight against climate change is a call-to-arms for the industry. We currently rely on fossil fuels, a major source of the greenhouse gas CO2, not only for energy but also to create chemicals for manufacturing. To ween our economies off this dependency, we must find a new source of “green” raw materials so that factories and laboratories can run without producing and emitting CO2.
Now, a research team at Osaka University has discovered how to create valuable chemicals from clean sources. They used biomass, essentially waste from plant materials. Biomass is rich in organic molecules – long chains of carbon atoms attached to oxygen. Existing methods can break the carbon-oxygen bonds in these molecules to create, for example, raw materials for plastics. However, breaking the carbon-carbon bonds, in order to shorten the molecular chains, is harder; extreme temperatures are needed, and often yield unwanted products.
The method developed at Osaka is based on a new catalyst. Catalysts allow reactions to occur, without being consumed themselves. They are often based on metals, and the new example is no exception – it consists of atomically small particles of ruthenium, a metal related to iron, sitting on a material called cerium oxide.
Read More: Catalysing a green future for chemistry
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