The chunk of metal sitting on a table in Joel Rosenthal's office at the University of Delaware looks like it should belong in a wizard's pocket. Shiny silver with shocks of pink and splashes of gold, it's called bismuth, and it's currently used to make products ranging from shotgun pellets to cosmetics and antacids, including Pepto-Bismol.
But Professor Rosenthal's research is expanding bismuth's repertoire -- he's identified a kind of magic in the metal that may be just what the doctor ordered for Planet Earth. He says it could help reduce rising carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere and provide sustainable routes to making fuels.
Rosenthal and his team in UD's Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry have discovered that bismuth has an unusual property that can be harnessed to help the environment -- as a chemical "spark" or catalyst for converting carbon dioxide (CO2), a greenhouse gas, into liquid fuels and industrial chemicals. The findings are reported in ACS Catalysis, a journal published by the American Chemical Society. Rosenthal's team also has filed a patent on the work.
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