Singapore Discovers How To Turn Carbon Dioxide Into Methanol!

Yea you read the title right! They has just made an enormous contribution to relieving the world's debt to the environment! Finally ey finally...

Well i remember how i have this stomach ache everytime i sit for my Chemistry paper back to my college year, now i understand how important it is!ha ha.

In the international chemistry journal Angewandte Chemie, the IBN researchers report that by using organocatalysts, they activated carbon dioxide in a mild and non-toxic process to produce methanol, a widely used industrial feedstock and clean-burning biofuel.

The scientists made carbon dioxide react by using N-heterocyclic carbenes (NHCs), a novel organocatalyst. In contrast to heavy metal catalysts that contain toxic and unstable components, NHCs are stable, even in the presence of oxygen. Hence, the reaction with NHCs and carbon dioxide can take place under mild conditions in dry air.

Err...maybe we can just pretend to understand those technical term they are using there. hehe..as far as i remember two H to add 1 O will produce water! Ha ha ha...Yayy..maybe i will need to reward myself some beaded lanyards for still remember that! :P

Well malaysian, apa tunggu lagi? Singapore is just the third smallest sovereign nation in the world, and they can make such a BIG THING? Lets show the world that MALAYSIA BOLEH..boleh?

But i hope they won't turn all CO2 to methanol, because the plants will need some for their photosynthesis thingy :)

CO2 to methanol conversion process is a pretty interesting concept; I'd like to see how cost/energy efficient it is. It would also be interesting to see what type of scale this process could operate on.