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Blog – Page 959

Acetic acid, also known as acetate, and other products that can be developed from acetic acid are used in a variety of industries, from food production to medicine to agriculture. Currently, acetate production uses a significant amount of energy and results in harmful waste products. The efficient and sustainable production of acetate is an important target for researchers interested in improving industrial sustainability.

A paper published in Carbon Future (“CO 2 electroreduction to acetate by enhanced tandem effects of surface intermediate over Co 3 O 4 supported polyaniline catalyst”) outlines a method using a polyaniline catalyst with cobalt oxide nanoparticles to produce acetate through carbon dioxide electroreduction.

This image shows a polyaniline catalyst coated in cobalt oxide nanoparticles and demonstrates how the catalyst facilitates the conversion of carbon dioxide to carbon monoxide to acetate. (Image: Carbon Future)

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While obtaining H2 from water splitting offers a promising strategy for renewable fuel production, current technologies rely on liquid freshwater. Here, authors use a hygroscopic electrolyte to achieve electrocatalytic water vapor splitting driven by renewable resources without liquid water.

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An initiative that sounds a lot like Jules Verne’s Journey to the Center of the Earth might mark the first time humans have tapped into magma, the molten rock liquid flowing beneath Earth’s crust. In 2026, Iceland’s Krafla Magma Testbed (KMT) project will drill into a volcano’s magma chamber, seeking to tap into its super-hot fumes to generate geothermal energy at a scale that has never been attempted before.

The endeavor promises to power homes across Iceland with a renewable, limitless energy source. And no, this won’t cause the currently active Krafla volcano to erupt, according to John Eichelberger, a volcanologist at the University of Alaska Fairbanks interviewed by New Scientist.

Geothermal energy, a technology harnessed by Iceland for years, involves drilling into hot underground regions to produce steam from heated water. This steam drives turbines, generating electricity. Today, at least 90% of all homes in Iceland are heated with geothermal energy and 70% of all energy used in the island nation comes from geothermal sources.

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A very relevant subject for research.

The world appears to contain diverse kinds of objects and systems—planets, tornadoes, trees, ant colonies, and human persons, to name but a few—characterized by distinctive features and behaviors. This casual impression is deepened by the success of the special sciences, with their distinctive taxonomies and laws characterizing astronomical, meteorological, chemical, botanical, biological, and psychological processes, among others. But there’s a twist, for part of the success of the special sciences reflects an effective consensus that the features of the composed entities they treat do not “float free” of features and configurations of their components, but are rather in some way(s) dependent on them.

Consider, for example, a tornado. At any moment, a tornado depends for its existence on dust and debris, and ultimately on whatever micro-entities compose it; and its properties and behaviors likewise depend, one way or another, on the properties and interacting behaviors of its fundamental components. Yet the tornado’s identity does not depend on any specific composing micro-entity or configuration, and its features and behaviors appear to differ in kind from those of its most basic constituents, as is reflected in the fact that one can have a rather good understanding of how tornadoes work while being entirely ignorant of particle physics.

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