CO2 tagged posts

Researchers have demonstrated a new and sustainable way to make the chemicals that are the basis of thousands of products—from plastics to cosmetics—we use every day.

Hundreds of thousands of chemicals are manufactured by the chemical industry, which transforms raw materials—usually fossil fuels—into useful end products. Due to its size and its use of fossil fuel feedstocks, the chemical industry is responsible for roughly 6% of global carbon emissions.

But researchers led by the University of Cambridge are developing new methods that could one day lead to the “de-fossilization” of this important sector.

They have developed a hybrid device that combines light-harvesting organic polymers with bacter...

Scientists have developed a technology that may help humans survive on the moon. In a study published in the journal Joule, researchers extracted water from lunar soil and used it to convert carbon dioxide into oxygen and chemicals for fuel—potentially opening new doors for future deep space exploration by mitigating the need to transport essential resources like water and fuel all the way from Earth.

“We never fully imagined the ‘magic’ that the lunar soil possessed,” said Lu Wang of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen.

“The biggest surprise for us was the tangible success of this integrated approach...

Long-term studies of ozone and water vapor in the atmosphere of Mars could lead to better understanding of atmospheric chemistry for the Earth. A new analysis of data from ESA’s Mars Express mission has revealed that our knowledge of the way these atmospheric gases interact with each other is incomplete.

Using four martian years of observations from the SPICAM (Spectroscopy for the Investigation of the Characteristics of the Atmosphere of Mars) instrument, which corresponds to seven and a half Earth years, a team of researchers from Europe and Russia uncovered the gap in our knowledge when trying to reproduce their data with a global climate model of Mars.

Ozone and water vapor do not make good atmospheric companions...

Enceladus’ subsurface ocean composition hints at habitable conditions. A Southwest Research Institute team developed a new geochemical model that reveals that carbon dioxide (CO2) from within Enceladus, an ocean-harboring moon of Saturn, may be controlled by chemical reactions at its seafloor...