The global utilization of hydrogen peroxide, a green oxidant that decomposes in water and oxygen, has gone from 0.5 million tonnes per year three decades ago to 4.5 million tonnes per year in 2014, ...and is still climbing. With the aim of expanding the utilization of this eminent green chemical across different industrial and civil sectors, the production and use of hydrogen peroxide as a green industrial oxidant is reviewed herein to provide an overview of the explosive growth of its industrial use over the last three decades and of the state of the art in its industrial manufacture, with important details of what determines the viability of the direct production from oxygen and hydrogen compared with the traditional auto‐oxidation process.
No waste: The global utilization of hydrogen peroxide has increased dramatically over the last 30 years. With the aim of expanding the utilization of this eminent green chemical across different industrial and civil sectors, the production and use of hydrogen peroxide as a green industrial oxidant is reviewed herein. Photograph of Henry J. Nye, reproduced with author kind permission.
Driven by the rapid uptake of battery electric vehicles, Li-ion power batteries are increasingly reused in stationary energy storage systems, and eventually recycled to recover all the valued ...components. Offering an updated global perspective, this study provides a circular economy insight on lithium-ion battery reuse and recycling.
Solar energy and the bioeconomy are emerging as two new important assets of the United Arab Emirates' economy. The consequences identified in this study offering guidelines to foster their practical ...development span from higher education and international student recruitment, through new entrepreneurship from local and foreign entrepreneurs and investors.
The bioeconomy and solar energy will emerge soon as two key assets of the UAE economy and higher education system, with significant consequences investigated in this study.
Partly explaining the low uptake of energy production from renewable energy sources, Russia accesses huge oil, natural gas, coal, and uranium resources and hosts advanced nuclear energy, oil, and ...natural gas industries. Yet, the combined effect of the exceedingly low cost of electricity generation via today's photovoltaic modules and wind turbines combined with energy storage in Li‐ion battery and hydrogen obtained via water electrolysis will shortly have a profound impact on Russia's economy and manufacturing industry. The buildup of Russia's clean energy technology industry will require proper planning, rationalization efforts, and the development of creative and effective policies, which will include new educational initiatives in today's new energy technologies and energy management.
The combined effect of the exceedingly low cost of electricity generation via today's photovoltaic modules and wind turbines combined with energy storage in Li‐ion battery and hydrogen obtained via water electrolysis will have a profound impact on Russia's economy.
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•The use of MOFs for photocatalytic CO2 reduction is very promising.•MOFs can act as both light harvesters and catalytic active sites.•MOFs can be used as co-catalysts improving the ...reactivity of traditional semiconductors.•MOFs can act as hosts or sacrificial precursors to immobilize a number of structures.
Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) have emerged over the last decades as an interesting class of materials for a plethora of applications due to their flexible tunability in composition, structure and functional properties. In particular, the urgent need to convert CO2 into useful chemical substances have led to growing attention towards these catalysts as promising candidates for CO2 capture and storage with the ultimate aim of promoting sustainable pathways to address energy and environmental problems. This review provides an overview of the fundamental factors and recent studies of MOFs for CO2 photoreduction, pointing out the main strategies adopted in the design and testing of innovative MOFs-based catalysts, where MOFs serve either directly as the only photoactive materials for CO2 transformation into chemical fuels or as units of hybrid catalytic arrangements to enhance CO2 conversion. The functionalization of MOFs is a promising approach to improve their photocatalytic activity. Their absorption of visible light can be enhanced either by modification of MOFs structure or by adjusting the organic ligands to contain reactive functional groups, through the inclusion of metal nodes with higher reduction potential, or even through a combination of both strategies. MOFs can also be used as co-catalysts along with other photocatalytic entities, resulting in MOF-based composites with enhanced CO2 photoreduction. The performance of MOFs-based photocatalysts is analyzed in this review, with a view to emphasizing not only the advantages but also the limitations, over the more traditional semiconductors photocatalysts. At the current stage, the main challenges of these MOFs-based photocatalysts relate to the economic feasibility of industrial-scale processes and to the poor stability of these materials, which is often lost after some runs. It is hoped that this review will help the design of increasingly efficient MOF-based materials for CO2 reduction and create the needed awareness that more work is still needed in order to be able to actualize and explore the potentials of MOFs in addressing the key issues of environmental sustainability.
This study investigates citation patterns between 2017 and 2020 for preprints published in three preprint servers, one specializing in biology (bioRxiv), one in chemistry (ChemRxiv), and another ...hosting preprints in all disciplines (Research Square). Showing evidence that preprints are now regularly cited in peer reviewed journal articles, books, and conference papers, the outcomes of this investigation further substantiate the value of open science also in relation to citation-based metrics on which the evaluation of scholarship continues to rely on. This analysis will be useful to inform new research-based education in today’s scholarly communication.
In the late 1990s chemists were among the early adopters of open access (OA) publishing. As also happened with preprints, the early successful adoption of OA publishing by chemists subsequently ...slowed down. In 2016 chemistry was found to be the discipline with the lowest proportion of OA articles in articles published between 2009 and 2015. To benefit from open science in terms of enhanced citations, collaboration, job and funding opportunities, chemistry scholars need updated information (and education) of practical relevance about open science. Suggesting avenues for quick uptake of OA publishing from chemists in both developed and developing countries, this article offers a critical perspective on academic publishing in the chemical sciences that will be useful to inform that education.
Tremendous interest is devoted to fabricating numerous graphene (GR)-semiconductor composites toward improved conversion of solar energy, resulting from the observation that the photogenerated ...electrons from semiconductors (e.g., TiO2, CdS) can be readily accepted or shuttled in the two-dimensional (2D) GR sheet. Yet although the hunt is on for GR-semiconductor composite based photoredox applications that aim to exploit the remarkable electronic conductivity of GR, the work necessary to find out how it could best be harnessed to improve the photocatalytic performance of semiconductors remains scanty. In this review, we highlight a few problems associated with improving the photocatalytic performance of semiconductors via methodological coupling with GR. In particular, we address strategies for harnessing the structure and electronic conductivity of GR via strengthening the interfacial contact, optimizing the electronic conductivity of GR, and spatially optimizing the interfacial charge carrier transfer efficiency. Additionally, we provide a brief overview of assembly methods for fabricating GR-semiconductor composites with controllable film infrastructure to meet the requirements of practical photocatalytic applications. Finally, we propose that, only with the principle of designing and understanding GR-semiconductor composites from a system-level consideration, we might get better at imparting the power of GR with unique and transformative properties into the composite system.
The exploratory analysis of the differences between preprints and the corresponding peer reviewed journal articles for ten studies first published on ChemRxiv and on Preprints, though statistically ...non-significant, suggests outcomes of relevance for chemistry researchers and educators. The full transition to open science requires new education of doctoral students and young researchers on scholarly communication in the digital age. The preliminary findings of this study will contribute to inform the curriculum of the aforementioned new courses for young chemists, eventually promoting accelerated innovation in a science that, unique amid all basic sciences, originates a huge industry central to the wealth of nations.
Owing to new biotechnological production units mostly located in China, global supply of citric acid in the course of the last two decades rose from less than 0.5 to more than 2 million tonnes ...becoming the single largest chemical obtained via biomass fermentation and the most widely employed organic acid. Critically reviewing selected research achievements and production trends, we identify the reasons for which this polycarboxylic acid will become a key chemical in the emerging bioeconomy.
Graphical abstract
Palermo's Fabbrica Chimica Italiana Goldenberg today. In 1930 it was Europe’s largest citric acid plant (photo courtesy of Aldo Ferrande)
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