Renewable energy: Scientists accidentally turn carbon dioxide into ethanol

A team of scientists has turned a waste product — carbon dioxide — into a fuel — ethanol — in a relatively simple process. And it happened almost by accident.

The US Department of Energy Oak Ridge National Laboratory scientists were running a solution of carbon dioxide dissolved in water over a charged surface in the hopes of describing a reaction when they made their serendipitous discovery.

"We discovered somewhat by accident that this material worked," study lead author Adam Rondinone said.

"We were trying to study the first step of a proposed reaction when we realised that the catalyst was doing the entire reaction on its own."

The catalyst in question was nanoscopic spikes of carbon, studded with copper nanoparticles, that was electrified to essentially reverse the combustion process.

Read the ABC story - “Renewable energy: Scientists accidentally turn carbon dioxide into ethanol.”

Fifteen-year-old girl creates building material from waste

India's Bisman Deu develops an environmentally
building material from farm's biggest waste product.

After seeing the environmental hazards that burning rice waste was causing at her family farm in North India, then-15 year old Bisman Deu saw an opportunity to create something useful, and developed an environmentally sustainable building material out of the farm’s biggest waste product.

She’s 18 now, and finishing school in Chandigarh, but Deu is on a journey with her product, Green Wood, as it becomes more relevant now than ever before.

To understand Deu’s product, one needs to understand the levels of dire pollution that the entire North India region suffers as a result of two major burning seasons for farmers. The first round is in May, during the heat of summer when wheat chaff is burnt and rice crops are sown, and the second in November when rice paddy is burnt and wheat crops are sown.

Deu’s family farm in the North Indian city of Amritsar grows both wheat and rice.

Read the Forbes Asia story “At The Age of 15 She Invented Building Material From Indian Rice Waste.”