Over the next 10 to 20 years, capturing carbon dioxide (CO₂)—a powerful greenhouse gas emitted from sources such as fossil-fuel-burning power plants, natural-gas processing plants, bioethanol plants, and cement plants—could become a significant method for mitigating climate change. Most of the captured CO₂ would probably be injected deep into the earth, a practice known as carbon capture and storage (CCS). The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) estimates that the current cost to capture a ton of CO₂ is $60, which is cost prohibitive. With technological improvements, the DOE projects the cost to capture a ton of CO₂ could drop to a more affordable $40 in 10 years. See also: Carbon capture and storage; Carbon dioxide; Cement; Electric power generation; Global climate change; Greenhouse effect; Natural gas

One proposed means of reducing the cost of carbon capture is to sell some of the CO₂ for subsequent use. As a result, CO₂ is now considered not just an air pollutant but also a commodity; and a new acronym was born: CCUS (carbon capture, use and storage). Among the potential applications outlined by the DOE is the use of CO₂ as a feedstock to produce chemicals, including fuels. See also: Air pollution

In the chemical industry, the greatest use of CO₂ (110–120 million metric tons per year) is for the production of urea, which is used primarily as a fertilizer, by reacting ammonia (NH₃) with CO₂. Considering that global CO₂ emissions are around 10 billion metric tons per year, converting CO₂ to useful chemicals is not expected to make a big dent in the carbon emissions problem. However, researchers are making progress in developing efficient methods for converting CO₂ into chemicals, so its potential use could be significant. See also: Ammonia; Urea

For example, in 2012 in the journal Angewandte Chemie, C. Das Neves Gomes and coworkers reported an organocatalytic process for converting CO₂ into formamides, which are important chemical intermediates used to make antistatic agents, heterocyclic compounds, pharmaceuticals, pesticides, and solvents. For energy applications, J. L. DiMeglio and J. Rosenthal reported in 2013 in the Journal of the American Chemical Society their discovery of a bismuth-based electrocatalyst for reducing CO₂ to carbon monoxide (CO), an important starting material for producing synthetic fuels. Their research is significant because bismuth as a catalyst is much cheaper than silver, platinum, or palladium, and the resulting fuels would reduce CO₂ emissions by 40 percent. Likewise, in 2014 Q. Lu and coworkers reported in Nature a nanoporous silver electrocatalyst that is 3000 times more active than polycrystalline silver for converting CO₂ to CO. See also: Amine; Bismuth; Catalysis; Heterocyclic compounds; Oxidation-reduction; Pesticide; Silver; Synthetic fuel

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