Zeiss Makro-Planar T*2/100mm ZE

A chemical element so visually striking that it was named for a goddess shows a “Goldilocks” level of reactivity — neither too much nor too little — that makes it a strong candidate as a carbon scrubbing tool.

The element is vanadium, and research by Oregon State University scientists has demonstrated the ability of vanadium peroxide molecules to react with and bind carbon dioxide — an important step toward improved technologies for removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

[…]

how some transition metal complexes can react with air to remove carbon dioxide and convert it to a metal carbonate, similar to what is found in many naturally occurring minerals.

Transition metals are located near the center of the periodic table and their name arises from the transition of electrons from low energy to high energy states and back again, giving rise to distinctive colors. For this study, the scientists landed on vanadium, named for Vanadis, the old Norse name for the Scandinavian goddess of love said to be so beautiful her tears turned to gold.

Nyman explains that carbon dioxide exists in the atmosphere at a density of 400 parts per million. That means for every 1 million air molecules, 400 of them are carbon dioxide, or 0.04%.

“A challenge with direct air capture is finding molecules or materials that are selective enough, or other reactions with more abundant air molecules, such as reactions with water, will outcompete the reaction with CO₂,” Nyman said. “Our team synthesized a series of molecules that contain three parts that are important in removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, and they work together.”

One part was vanadium, so named because of the range of beautiful colors it can exhibit, and another part was peroxide, which bonded to the vanadium. Because a vanadium peroxide molecule is negatively charged, it needed alkali cations for charge balance, Nyman said, and the researchers used potassium, rubidium and cesium alkali cations for this study.

[…]

vanadium peroxide is a beautiful, purple Goldilocks that becomes golden when exposed to air and binds a carbon dioxide molecule.”

She notes that another valuable characteristic of vanadium is that it allows for the comparatively low release temperature of about 200 degrees Celsius for the captured carbon dioxide.

[…]

“Being able to rerelease the captured CO₂ enables reuse of the carbon capture materials, and the lower the temperature required for doing that, the less energy that’s needed and the smaller the cost. There are some very clever ideas about reuse of captured carbon already being implemented — for example, piping the captured CO₂ into a greenhouse to grow plants.”

[…]

Story Source:

Materials provided by Oregon State University. Original written by Steve Lundeberg. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

---

Journal Reference:

1. Eduard Garrido Ribó, Zhiwei Mao, Jacob S. Hirschi, Taylor Linsday, Karlie Bach, Eric D. Walter, Casey R. Simons, Tim J. Zuehlsdorff, May Nyman. Implementing vanadium peroxides as direct air carbon capture materials. Chemical Science, 2024; 15 (5): 1700 DOI: 10.1039/D3SC05381D

 

Source: Key advance for capturing carbon from the air | ScienceDaily

Global warming is largely caused by carbon dioxide and other gases absorbing infrared radiation, trapping heat in Earth’s atmosphere – known as the greenhouse effect.

The most accurate climate models use precise measurements of the amount of radiation CO₂ can absorb to calculate how much heat will be trapped in the atmosphere. These models are excellent at predicting future changes in Earth’s climate, but they don’t provide a physical explanation for why this gas can absorb so much radiation, which can make their predictions difficult to explain.

Robin Wordsworth at Harvard University and his colleagues have now shown how CO₂’s heat-trapping properties can be explained in terms of quantum mechanical effects, in particular a phenomenon called the Fermi resonance.

Sign up to our Fix the Planet newsletter

Get a dose of climate optimism delivered straight to your inbox every month.

Sign up to newsletter

“Rather than just a narrow range of radiation getting absorbed, as you would naively expect, it becomes much broader,” says Wordsworth. “It’s this broadening which is really critical to understanding why carbon dioxide is an important greenhouse gas.”

The Fermi resonance describes how the different directions and patterns in which molecules vibrate can influence each other and make them vibrate more. This is similar to how two pendulums, connected by a shared string, can increase the amplitude of each other’s swinging.

A molecule of CO₂ consists of two oxygen atoms bonded to one carbon atom. Two of the molecule’s vibrations influence each other to make it absorb more light: a side-to-side stretching of the oxygen atoms, and a sidewinder snake-like zigzagging of these atoms.

Wordsworth and his colleagues came up with equations to describe how much radiation CO₂ can absorb based on its physical properties, with and without the Fermi resonance. They found that its light-absorbing features and its warming effect on Earth’s atmosphere could only be reproduced when the resonance was included.

The Fermi resonance was responsible for nearly half of the total warming effect. “Even things that are happening on the scale of our planet are determined, ultimately, by what’s going on at the micro scale,” says Wordsworth.

While it was already known that CO₂ had a particularly large Fermi resonance, having an equation that links this to the greenhouse effect could be useful for quick calculations without running a full climate model, says Jonathan Tennyson at University College London. This could also help physicists model the climate of exoplanets, which can require large amounts of computing power to fully simulate.

Something that Wordsworth and his team couldn’t explain is why CO₂ vibrates in such a unique way – a question that might never be answered without a theory of everything. “There doesn’t seem to be a clear reason why this resonance occurs in CO₂,” says Wordsworth. “One could imagine a different universe where it was slightly different, and carbon dioxide might not have the same effects.”

 

Reference:

arXiv DOI: 10.48550/arXiv.2401.15177

Source: Quantum quirk explains why carbon dioxide causes global warming | New Scientist

Researchers have profiled the entire immune system in young children to compare their response to SARS-CoV-2 with that of adults. The results, published in Cell, show that infants’ systems mount a strong innate response in their noses, where the airborne virus usually enters the body. And unlike adults, babies don’t exhibit widespread inflammatory signaling throughout their circulatory system, perhaps preventing severe COVID.

The research team, led by Stanford Medicine immunologist Bali Pulendran, took blood samples from 81 infants (54 of whom became infected with the virus between one month and three years of age) and dozens of adults. The researchers also took weekly nasal swabs from kids and adults with and without COVID. They then analyzed proteins and gene activity in these samples to track participants’ innate and adaptive immune responses to the virus. “This sort of longitudinal mapping of the immune response of infants, to any virus, had not been done before,” Pulendran says.

The team found stark differences between children and adults in both adaptive and innate immune responses. Infected infants’ noses were flooded with inflammatory signaling molecules and cells. But unlike in the adults, there were no signs of inflammation in their blood.

[…]

Even without a widespread innate response, young children had surprisingly long-lasting levels of SARS-specific antibodies in their blood, Pulendran says. Future research revealing how these innate and adaptive responses are linked could eventually help improve nasally delivered vaccines for children and, potentially, adults.

A crucial question remains: What makes SARS-CoV-2 different from other respiratory viruses, such as influenza and respiratory syncytial virus, which are more deadly for infants?

[…]

Source: Here’s Why Infants Are Strangely Resistant to COVID | Scientific American

Delivering medication to the lungs with inhalable nanoparticles may help treat chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). In mice with signs of the condition, the treatment improved lung function and reduced inflammation.

COPD causes the lungs’ airways to become progressively narrower and more rigid, obstructing airflow and preventing the clearance of mucus. As a result, mucus accumulates in the lungs, attracting bacterial pathogens that further exacerbate the disease.

This thick mucus layer also traps medications, making it challenging to treat infections. So, Junliang Zhu at Soochow University in China and his colleagues developed inhalable nanoparticles capable of penetrating mucus to deliver medicine deep within the lungs.

The researchers constructed the hollow nanoparticles from porous silica, which they filled with an antibiotic called ceftazidime. A shell of negatively charged compounds surrounding the nanoparticles blocked off pores, preventing antibiotic leakage. This negative charge also helps the nanoparticles penetrate mucus. Then, the slight acidity of the mucus transforms the shells’ charge from negative to positive, opening up pores and releasing the medication.

The researchers used an inhalable spray containing the nanoparticles to treat a bacterial lung infection in six mice with signs of COPD. An equal number of animals received only the antibiotic.

On average, mice treated with the nanoparticles had about 98 per cent less pathogenic bacteria inside their lungs than those given just the antibiotic. They also had fewer inflammatory molecules in their lungs and lower carbon dioxide in their blood, indicating better lung function.

These findings suggest the nanoparticles could improve drug delivery in people with COPD or other lung conditions like cystic fibrosis where thick mucus makes it difficult to treat infections, says Vincent Rotello at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, who wasn’t involved in the study. However, it is unclear if these nanoparticles are cleared by lungs. “If you have a delivery system that builds up over time, that would be problematic,” he says.

Source: COPD: Inhalable nanoparticles could help treat chronic lung disease | New Scientist