Chemistry

Out of carbon dioxide and solar energy, land plants produce biomass, which contains valuable building blocks for the bioeconomy. It is easy to forget that algae also remove enormous amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere - about as much as the entire land vegetation. Algae primarily produce multiple sugars, whose degradation products are important food sources for numerous marine organisms. One of these degradation processes has now been investigated by an international team of researchers.

Worldwide, an estimated 100,000 animal species produce toxins. Some serve to protect against predators, others to hunt prey. What many poisons have in common is that they can have the opposite effect in small doses: Important antihypertensives, anticoagulants and pain killers are based on animal toxins, and a toxin of the bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis is making waves as a biological insecticide. Unlike snakes or spiders, little is known about the toxins of predatory flies.

When a disease infestation in a field becomes visible to the naked eye, the infection has often already spread and caused damage. In addition, the symptom alone does not always make it clear which pathogen is involved and which therapy is therefore the most effective. The companies Ontera Inc. and BASF therefore want to speed up the process: They have agreed to collaborate on research into a portable system for the early diagnosis of plant diseases.

It belongs to the sunflower family, grows in Africa as a wild plant and is considered by many to be a weed: Vernonia galamensis, commonly known as ironweed. But the plant that can only grow along the equator has attractive properties: Its seeds contain a high proportion of unsaturated epoxidized fatty acids, which can account for up to 80% of the oil content in some Ethiopian species. Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Energy Conversion in Mülheim an der Ruhr now want to produce special "green" plastics from this vegetable raw material.

Crude oil is of great value to the chemical industry because of the carbon compounds it contains. Not only vegetable biomass, but also the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide can be considered as an alternative source of carbon for chemical processes - as long as these processes are profitable. Catalysts are a key element for economic efficiency. Researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Interfacial Engineering and Biotechnology (IGB) are working on optimizing such catalysts and processes.

It is another success for the Swiss specialty chemicals group Clariant: In the pre-commercial lignocellulose biorefinery in Straubing, Bavaria, the company has now enzymatically processed around 30 metric tons of Miscanthus grass, also known as maiden silvergrass or elephant grass, into lignocellulose sugars and ethanol.

So far, they have only been nominated, but this in itself is already a distinction: the three chemists Walter Leitner, Christoph Gürtler and Berit Stange have made it to the final of the German Future Prize 2019. Their research success is an important building block for a future carbon cycle economy: The three scientists have developed a process with which polyols can be produced from the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide, which in turn are the starting material for the polyurethane plastics group. So far, polyols have been produced primarily from crude oil.

The second generation of biofuels is produced from agricultural residues, such as grain straw or Chinese reed. The Swiss specialty chemicals group Clariant AG has developed sunliquid technology for this purpose, a biotechnological process in which cellulose-ethanol can be produced from plant residues. In Straubing, Bavaria, Clariant operates a demonstration plant for the lignocellulose biorefinery. This technology has now found a second licensee in PKN Orlen, a petroleum company that is particularly strong in Central Europe.

Ludwigshafen-based BASF, the world's largest chemical company, has acquired the Dutch company Isobionics, which specializes in the biotechnological production of fragrances and flavors. BASF also announced its cooperation with the US company Conagen, which produces biotechnological production strains used, among other things, for the production of vanillin.

Until now, there were two types of catalysts that could be used for fuel cells: expensive precious metals such as platinum or short-lived biological molecules. A cooperation between researchers from the Ruhr University Bochum (RUB) and scientists from Marseille has now succeeded in developing a biocatalyst that will theoretically last 22,000 years.