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Nachrichten, Termine, Experten
Nachrichten, Termine, Experten
There have been three Nobel Prizes awarded for catalysis research since 2001 alone. Four of the Laureates honoured in this connection - Ryoji Noyori, Robert Grubbs, Richard Schrock and Gerhard Ertl - will be on hand in Lindau from June 28th to July 3rd to discuss the outlook in their field with 600 young researchers from 66 countries. The event in Lindau will also feature a podium discussion on the role of chemistry in developing renewable energies (Wednesday, July 1st ).
Catalysis is the art of making inert substances react with one another so quickly and effectively that the desired products are created inexpensively and with no harm done to the environment. It is also considered a key technology for decoupling our energy supplies from fossil fuels. This gives the discipline more current relevance than ever before - a full century after German chemist Wilhelm Ostwald was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1909 in recognition of his work to provide the scientific bases for catalysis. There have been three Nobel Prizes awarded for catalysis research since 2001 alone. Four of the Laureates honoured in this connection - Ryoji Noyori, Robert Grubbs, Richard Schrock and Gerhard Ertl - will be on hand in Lindau at the end of the month to discuss the outlook in their field with 600 young researchers from 66 countries. The event in Lindau will also feature a podium discussion on the role of chemistry in developing renewable energies (Wednesday, July 1st ).
Today, more than 80 percent of all chemical products are produced with the aid of catalysts - from plastics to cosmetics, from textiles to medicines. This is because most chemical reactions would proceed much too slowly on their own. Before a chemical reaction can occur, existing bonds between certain atoms must be broken. To accomplish this, the reactants require energy. What is known as the 'energy of activation' forms a kind of mountain in front of the reactants and prevents quick interactions between them. What catalysts do is to drastically reduce the height of this mountain. Frequently there is a metal at their centre that offers itself to the reactants for the formation of intermediate products requiring less energy to produce. In this way, catalysts essentially create a feasible pass over an energy mountain the peak of which would otherwise be much too high for the reactants involved. Reactions that, left to themselves, would take months to complete - if at all - can thus take place in a matter of minutes. The catalysts themselves emerge from the reaction unchanged. In the words of Wilhelm Ostwald: 'A catalyst is a substance that increases the speed of a chemical reaction without itself being affected by the reaction.'
The same year in which Ostwald was awarded the Nobel Prize, his basic research had already prompted development of a catalytic process permitting the 'capture' of nitrogen from the air and combining it with hydrogen to create ammonia. With the Haber-Bosch process that bears their name, Fritz Haber (Nobel Prize 1918) and Carl Bosch (Nobel Prize 1931) did ease the production of explosives, but it also solved one of the most pressing problems facing humanity at the time: the challenge of securing a sustained supply of food for the rapidly growing world population. In the early 20th century, natural sources of nitrogen (saltpetre) used in fertilizers began to dwindle. Renowned scientists warned of a catastrophic global famine. Against this backdrop, ammonia chemically produced with the aid of catalysis emerged as the longed-for basis of artificially produced fertilizer. If not for the over 100 million tonnes of artificial fertilizer produced each year using the Haber-Bosch process, half of humankind would have nothing to eat.
Gerhard Ertl, Nobel Laureate in chemistry for 2007, has investigated the individual steps involved in the synthesis of ammonia in detail, at the atomic level. His research not only contributed to optimization of the process but at the same time established the modern field of surface chemistry. In this process, the catalyst is actually the surface of a solid - a thin layer of iron on which the two gaseous reactants meet. Because the atoms of the surface layer have far fewer neighbours than the atoms in the heated, pressurized gas, they tend to form transitory bonds with the gas atoms; this, in turn, catalyzes production of the end product. This high level of chemical activity on surfaces makes them susceptible to impurities. Specific reactions can only be investigated at all under strictly controlled vacuum conditions, and with extraordinary imagination and precision. Ertl also devoted a great deal of his attention to the detoxification of carbon monoxide to form carbon dioxide over platinum-plated catalytists in the exhaust pipes of cars. As his work revealed, what is essentially a simple reaction actually reaches astonishing levels of complexity. Under certain conditions, the formation of patterns such as these can be viewed as a general principle underlying the way natural processes are designed. Gerhard Ertl will report on this in his lecture, entitled 'From Atoms to Complexity: Reactions on Surfaces', with which he will kick off the meeting's scientific programme on 29 June.
Where the vision of hydrogen-driven energy generation is concerned, catalysis is a major source of hope. The principle involved is fascinating: by means of photocatalysis, water is broken down into its constituent components, hydrogen and oxygen. The hydrogen then serves as a store of energy and can, in fuel cells for instance, be recombined with oxygen again - resulting in water and the generation of electrical energy. That this cycle sounds futuristic owes primarily to the fact that, despite intense research efforts, light-induced catalytic fission of water still poses great difficulties. As a matter of principle, however, it should be feasible, perhaps through catalysts copied from nature. In nature, catalysts - more commonly known under their biological name: enzymes - are the ancient playmakers of life itself. Developed over millions of years of evolution, they provide chemists with unsurpassed models. They include not only the hydrolytic enzyme system of vegetable photosynthesis but also the hydrogenases found in bacteria that produce or consume hydrogen naturally. Today, these enzymes are the focus of intense research worldwide. One day, they may make a reality of today's vision of a renewable and environmentally friendly hydrogen economy supplying our earth with energy.
That visions such as these have always formed the basis of our own lives will be the topic of a lecture by John Walker, Nobel Laureate for 1997, at the meeting in Lindau, entitled 'Biological Energy Conversion'. Controlled combustion of our food within the cells of our body to create water and carbon dioxide through respiration generates energy that is chemically stored in the body. The store of energy is a molecule known as 'ATP' for short. Every day, each person produces and consumes roughly as much ATP as corresponds to his or her body weight. Responsible for the production of this energy at the end of what is known as the 'respiratory chain' are the mitochondria - the power plants within the cells themselves. Rotating within their internal membrane are enzymes, the ATP synthases, which are propelled by hydrogen ions. John Walker has successfully decoded the structure and operation mechanism of the ATP synthases. With a diameter of 10 millionths of a millimetre, ATP synthase is the smallest natural engine in the world. Its efficiency is nearly 100 percent - a top-notch model for a sustainable energy economy.
http://lindau-nobel.de/2009_Meeting_Chemistry.AxCMS?ActiveID=1338 - Information about the 2009 Nobel Laureate Meeting (Abstracts, Participants, Programme)
http://www.lindau-nobel.de - Live-Webstreams of Lectures and Panels
http://www.scienceblogs.de/lindaunobel - Official Conference Blog
http://www.twitter.com/lindaunobel - News live from the meeting
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