Using carbon dioxide (CO2) as a feedstock for commodity synthesis is an attractive means of reducing greenhouse gas emissions and a possible stepping-stone towards renewable synthetic fuels. A major impediment to synthesizing compounds from CO2 is the difficulty of forming carbon–carbon (C–C) bonds efficiently: although CO2 reacts readily with carbon-centred nucleophiles, generating these intermediates requires high-energy reagents (such as highly reducing metals or strong...
Tag Archives: dioxide
Sustainable chemistry: Putting carbon dioxide to work
Carbon dioxide is an abundant resource, but difficult for industry to use effectively. A simple reaction might allow it to be used to make commercial products more sustainably than with current processes. See Letter p.215
Nature 531 180 doi: 10.1038/531180a
Partially oxidized atomic cobalt layers for carbon dioxide electroreduction to liquid fuel
Electroreduction of CO2 into useful fuels, especially if driven by renewable energy, represents a potentially ‘clean’ strategy for replacing fossil feedstocks and dealing with increasing CO2 emissions and their adverse effects on climate. The critical bottleneck lies in activating CO2 into the CO2•− radical anion or other intermediates that can be converted further, as the activation usually requires impractically high overpotentials. Recently, electrocatalysts based...
Partially oxidized atomic cobalt layers for carbon dioxide electroreduction to liquid fuel
Electroreduction of CO2 into useful fuels, especially if driven by renewable energy, represents a potentially ‘clean’ strategy for replacing fossil feedstocks and dealing with increasing CO2 emissions and their adverse effects on climate. The critical bottleneck lies in activating CO2 into the CO2•− radical anion or other intermediates that can be converted further, as the activation usually requires impractically high overpotentials. Recently, electrocatalysts based...