‘Defying climate change calls for new approaches in breaking down greenhouse gases’, Professor Jan Paradies of Paderborn University said. The chemist and his team have now moved a step closer to this goal: the scientists have successfully managed to reduce ozone-damaging nitrous oxide (‘laughing gas’) to its harmless constituent parts using metal-free catalysis at low temperatures. The results were published in the internationally renowned Journal of the American Chemical Society.
‘Nitrous oxide is one of the most potent ozone-depleting substances and has a global warming potential 265 times higher than that of CO₂. It causes around six percent of global warming and is used in agricultural, industrial and medical processes. Its concentration in the atmosphere has risen by 20 percent since the industrial revolution. Given this environmental impact, there is a pressing need for research into new, efficient reduction methods’, Professor Paradies explained.
The research team, consisting of doctoral students Rundong Zhou and Viktorija Medvaric as well as Professor Thomas Werner and Professor Paradies, have demonstrated a facilitation of the oxygen transfer reaction from nitrous oxide to the phosphetane catalyst. Of the greenhouse gas, this then leaves behind only the harmless nitrogen, which can for example be further processed into fertiliser for agriculture. The new phosphetane-oxygen compound can then be returned to its original state via a reaction with a silane (a special chemical compound containing silicon and hydrogen), meaning that it can be repeatedly reused. This creates a catalytic cycle.
Go to paper: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/jacs.5c06190
Journal
Journal of the American Chemical Society