Snackable Sponge Can Suck Up CO2

Sponges already clean up kitchen spills and soap scum, now they may start cleaning up the atmosphere.

A newly-developed synthetic sponge made of salt, sugar, and alcohol soaks up carbon dioxide. It's non-toxic, reusable, and carbon neutral. In a pinch, you can even make a meal of it.

Northwestern University chemists developed this special sponge, known as a metal-organic framework (MOF). Other MOFs soak up carbon dioxide too, but are usually made from crude oil and contain more toxic heavy metals than Beavis and Butthead's record collection.

 The new sponges don't pollute the environment while cleaning it up. In fact, their manufacture could reduce the amount of greenhouse gas in the air, since they contain sugar made by plants which themselves pull carbon dioxide out of the air.

“We are able to take molecules that are themselves sourced from atmospheric carbon, through photosynthesis, and use them to capture even more carbon dioxide,” said Ross Forgan, a co-author of the sponge study published in Journal of the American Chemical Society, in a press release.

“By preparing our MOFs from naturally derived ingredients, we are not only making materials that are entirely nontoxic, but we are also cutting down on the carbon dioxide emissions associated with their manufacture,” said Forgan.

The main ingredient is gamma-cyclodextrin, a type of sugar derived from corn, held together in a crystalline structure by metals, such as potassium benzoate and rubidium hydroxide, derived from salts.

Despite the intimidating names of its ingredients, the MOF carbon sponge is actually edible.  But don't sit down to a sponge lunch just yet, the carbon-hungry sponges can be cleaned and reused.

“It turns out that a fairly unexpected event occurs when you put that many sugars next to each other in an alkaline environment -- they start reacting with carbon dioxide in a process akin to carbon fixation, which is how sugars are made in the first place,” said Jeremiah J. Gassensmith, lead author of the paper, in a press release.

“The reaction leads to the carbon dioxide being tightly bound inside the crystals, but we can still recover it at a later date very simply,” Gassensmith said.

The MOF sponges suck in the carbon dioxide and converts it to carbonate. But when exposed to an atmosphere with low concentrations of carbon dioxide, the gas is released.

Unlike other methods of carbon capture, little extra energy is needed to release the carbon dioxide.

"In our material, the CO2 is converted into a solid, most likely by reacting with the sugar, but if you blow a stream of nitrogen over the material, the CO2 spontaneously pops off and will go wherever you blow it, and the material is reused and thus recyclable.

"It is thus a very, very green way of trapping CO2," Gassensmith said.

The sponges could be used to scrub emissions or the air itself. The excess carbon can then be used in other industrial processes or stored somewhere.

The sponge even lets people know when it's ready for a cleaning.

The researchers included methyl red, a common chemical pH indicator, in the sponges to let them know when the sponge has soaked up all the carbon it can. A pH shift within the sponge causes the color to change from yellow to red when it is full of carbon.

Since the MOF carbon sponges are cheap and easy to manufacture, not to mention eco-friendly, Northwestern plans to pursue commercialization opportunities.

“I think this is a remarkable demonstration of how simple chemistry can be successfully applied to relevant problems like carbon capture and sensor technology,” said Ronald A. Smaldone, a co-author of the paper.

 by "environment clean generations"

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Posted in: atmosphere,carbon dioxide,environment,materials,nitrogen,nontoxic,recyclable,Snackable Sponge Can Suck Up CO2

Why The Sky Is Blue? No, Seriously

The answer is a little more complicated than you may think. It may have a lot to do with rocks, phosphorous and ancient algae, according to a new study.

For the first two billion years of Earth's history or so, the sky was probably orange. We're not sure whether that's really true -- no one's been able to hop in a time machine and go back and check -- but based on what we know about the chemistry of that time period, there's a good chance the atmosphere's primary component was methane (CH4), which would've cast a strange pall over our young planet.

These days, the atmosphere is mostly nitrogen and oxygen. Sunlight is made up of all the colors of the rainbow (as well as many wavelengths we can't see); as it jostles through air molecules, blue light is most efficiently reflected, so our eyes end up experiencing a beautiful azure shade.

How did it change from orange to blue? About 2.5 billion years ago, the newest fad in organisms was photosynthesis -- the ability to to turn sunlight, carbon dioxide (CO2) and water into sugar. Armed with the latest evolutionary accoutrement, ancient algae had it made -- an everlasting food source and all the world's oceans to expand into. 

Only one problem. Algae need more than sugar for a balanced diet; they need nutrients like phosphorous, too. Dominic Papineau of the Carnegie Institution for Science thinks they got it in a burst of erosion from 2.5 to 2 billion years ago, a period of time when Earth's atmosphere got its first big injection of oxygen.

The way Papineau sees it, the "Great Oxidation Event" lines up nicely with a rise in continental rifting and widespread glacial deposits. So it's possible that enhanced tectonic activity and a change in climate eroded large amounts of phosphorous-rich rocks, which washed into the ocean over a period of several hundred million years.

With plenty of phosphorous to munch, algae were off to the races, churning out oxygen that flooded the atmosphere, Papineau reasons in this press release. It's not unlike humans' prodigious use of fertilizers today, which can cause large algal blooms in rivers, lakes and even the Gulf of Mexico:

"Today, this is happening very fast and is caused by us," he says, "and the glut of organic matter actually consumes oxygen. But during the Proterozoic this occurred over timescales of hundreds of millions of years and progressively led to an oxygenated atmosphere."

The first episode only got us about 10 percent of the way toward present-day oxygen levels, though. It wasn't until about a billion years ago that the atmosphere got another hit of O2, bringing us to the air we breathe today. This period, from 1 billion to 540 million years ago, is known as the "Cambrian explosion" after the riot of diverse life found in the fossil record. 

In some ways, it's one of the most important moments in the history of life on Earth. Organisms went on a rampage of evolutionary innovation, giving rise to complex life forms the likes of which the planet had never seen before, and Papineau thinks phosphorous was behind it:

"This increased oxygen no doubt had major consequences for the evolution of complex life. It can be expected that modern changes will also strongly perturb evolution," (Papineau) adds. "However, new lineages of complex life-forms take millions to tens of millions of years to adapt. In the meantime, we may be facing significant extinctions from the quick changes we are causing."

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Posted in: nitrogen,oxygen,phosphorous,Seriously,You Know Why The Sky Is Blue? No

Building Blocks Of Life From Space

     Researchers have long been trying to explain the origin of the ammonia that triggered the formation of the first biomolecules on Earth. Meteorites may have released compounds including hydrocarbon chains and a large amount of ammonia, which is rich in nitrogen. 

             A meteorite found in Antarctica in 1995 and called "CR2 Grave Nunataks 59229" shows that the building blocks of life likely came from space. The meteorite found in Antarctica adds extra impact to the theory that the essential building blocks of life on Earth came from outer space, say scientists.

            The team from the University of Arizona say they have discovered a "carbonaceous chondrite" meteorite -- found in 1995 and called "CR2 Grave Nunataks 59229" -- contains relatively high amounts of ammonia and amino acids.

           Carbonaceous chondrites meteorites contain abundant organic materials as they have not been melted, and much of their original chemical composition remains intact.

           The research, led by Professor Sandra Pizzarello, is published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Researchers have been trying to explain the origin of the ammonia that triggered the formation of the first biomolecules on Earth.

           It was initially thought that the early Earth's atmosphere would have freed up nitrogen to bond with other elements. But more recently, scientists have theorized that nitrogen atoms in the primordial atmosphere had a natural tendency to bond with each other, forming inert nitrogen gas N2. The bonds between the atoms in this gas are stable and strong, which makes it difficult to break the molecules down or to combine with other elements, such as hydrogen or carbon.

        Under these conditions the nitrogen would not be available to bond with other elements in order to form the compounds and chains that form the building blocks of life.

          "The current geochemical evidence of early Earth's atmosphere, combined with known photochemical destruction of ammonia, has left prebiotic scenarios struggling to account for a constant provision of ammonia," write Pizzarello and her co-authors.

          That means scientists had to look for an alternative source.

Pizzarello and colleagues wanted to know if meteorites like "CR2 Grave Nunataks 59229" could provide an answer.

             They collected powder from the meteorite, treated it with water at high temperature and pressure, and analyzed the resulting compounds.

They found the rock released compounds including hydrocarbon chains and a large amount of ammonia, which is rich in nitrogen.

             This abundant release of ammonia from a carbonaceous chondrite meteorite is unprecedented, Pizzarello and colleagues write. Chemical analysis of the nitrogen from the meteorite shows that the atomic isotope is not the same as those currently found on Earth. The researchers say that knocks out the possibility that the ammonia resulted from contamination during the experiment

             "The findings appear to trace CR2 meteorites' origin to to cosmochemical regimes where ammonia was pervasive," the authors write. That, they speculate, was the first step on the pathway to life on Earth.

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Posted in: amonia,atmosphere,life,meteorite,nitrogen,space

Ozone

 

Heat increases tropospheric ozone level has heat added to usual traffic in Madrid and a half of the pollution measurement stations in Madrid beyond the level of health protection by ozone. No rain and no wind, but many cars and no political will to reverse the situation. Gallardón Mayor was reelected in office for four years.

            
              That, I hope I’m wrong, mean four more years of increasing pollution in the capital of Spain. 

The so-called bad or tropospheric ozone is produced as a result of a photochemical reaction that increases when the nitrogen oxide pollution is high and the solar incidence increases, explained the organization Ecologists in Action. 

             On Tuesday May 24, 2011, at eleven at night, a total of 16 of the 23 stations of the capital there were over 100 micrograms per cubic meter of nitrogen dioxide (NO2). Weather forecasts predict more heat. Forecasts predict political stagnation.

                It is not a new situation, if at all. It occurs every year from April to late August. Ozone production increases and decreases each day as the solar intensity. By becoming more oblique incidence of sunlight on the surface in late August when the summer draws to a close, low ozone production significantly.

               In the rest of the Community of Madrid is also the phenomenon. Alcalá stations, Fuenlabrada, Torrejón, Alcorcón, Colmenar Viejo, Majadahonda, Arganda, San Martin de Valdeiglesias Guadalix Algete Orusco Atazar and have reached levels above 120 micrograms per cubic meter. The same has happened at five stations in the capital’s heavy traffic away from downtown: Barajas, Vallecas Eixample, El Pardo, Juan Carlos I and Three Olives. 

              The current regulations can not overcome those 120 micrograms per cubic meter on average in eight hours and more than 25 days a year. The European Union already has a very serious warning about the Madrid City Council, notice that they seem to have fallen on deaf ears. 

             The threshold at which authorities are obliged to inform the population, by contrast, stood at 180 per cubic meter micrograms for one hour. This threshold has not been surpassed so far this year and the peaceful citizens breathe polluted air.

             One of the electoral promises of the mayor of Madrid has been to give priority to this problem. Hopefully, this time, they deliver what it promises. Meanwhile, it discourages physical activity, the athletic work in the middle of the day.

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Posted in: low ozone,nitrogen,pollution