Category Environment/Geology

Conceptual model shows how porphyrin COFs embedded in a cathode could be used to split carbon dioxide (CO2) into carbon monoxide (CO) and oxygen for making renewable fuels and other valuable chemical products. Credit: Courtesy of Omar Yaghi, Berkeley Lab/UC Berkeley

Porphyrin CO2 catalysts have been incorporated into the sponge-like crystals of covalent organic frameworks (COFs) to create a molecular system that not only absorbs carbon dioxide, but also selectively reduces it to CO, a primary building block for a wide range of chemical products including fuels, pharmaceuticals and plastics.

With the reduction of atmospheric CO2 emissions in mind, Yaghi and his MIU group designed and developed the first COFs as a means of separating CO2 from flue gases...

A rhodochrosite specimen from Butte, Mont. Credit: Robert Downs

New research predicts that Earth has more than 1,500 undiscovered minerals and that the exact mineral diversity of our planet is unique and could not be duplicated anywhere in the cosmos. Minerals form from novel combinations of elements. These combinations can be facilitated by both geological activity, including volcanoes, plate tectonics, and water-rock interactions, and biological activity, such as chemical reactions with oxygen and organic material.

Nearly a decade ago, Hazen developed the idea that the diversity explosion of planet’s minerals from the dozen present at the birth of our Solar System to the nearly 5,000 types existing today arose primarily from the rise of life...

Artificial photosynthesis used to produce renewable molecular hydrogen for synthesizing carbon dioxide into methane. Credit: Berkeley Lab

Researchers using a bioinorganic hybrid approach to artificial photosynthesis have combined semiconducting nanowires with select microbes to create a system that produces renewable H2 and uses it to synthesize CO2 into methane, the primary constituent of natural gas.

“By generating renewable hydrogen and feeding it to microbes for the production of methane, we can now expect an electrical-to-chemical efficiency of better than 50% and a solar-to-chemical energy conversion efficiency of 10% if our system is coupled with state-of-art solar panel and electrolyzer.”

The concept in the 2 studies is essentially the same – a membrane of semiconductor nanowires t...

Swirls of sea ice along the coast and dark blue waters of the Arctic Image Credit: NASA/Jeff Schmaltz, MODIS Land Rapid Response Team, NASA GSFC

As the northern hemisphere experiences the heat of summer, ice moves and melts in the Arctic waters and the far northern lands surrounding it. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) aboard NASA’s Aqua satellite captured this true-color image of sea ice off Greenland on July 16, 2015.

Large chunks of melting sea ice can be seen in the sea ice off the coast, and to the south spirals of ice have been shaped by the winds and currents that move across the Greenland Sea. Along the Greenland coast, cold, fresh melt water from the glaciers flows out to the sea, as do newly calved icebergs...