This week The Alchemist goes green offering a survey of environmental news related to the chemical sciences.
First up is the development of porous materials that can extract hydrogen from mixtures of gases. Next, solar energy could be used to convert the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide back into useful hydrocarbon fuel methane, while chicken manure offers a fowl approach to bioremediating oil-contaminated soil.
On the global scale, NASA hopes to work with Cisco Systems to create a Planetary Skin to monitor worldwide carbon build up, and chemistry and computing have been combined to explain why Antarctica cooled from its former sub-tropical conditions of 35 million years ago to the icecap we see today.
Finally, the 2009 Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement is awarded to two scientists for their work on understanding the human impact on climate change.
Get all the headlines and links in this week’s Alchemist.