Today's Tech News: Notable or Not?

https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1079766 "electrochemical ambient temperature/ pressure hydrogenation... made via facile galvanic displacement reaction... 2D metallene structure combined with atomically-dispersed Pt within Pd lattice, provides catalyst with >93% Faradaic efficiency, >66% DHMF selectivity under mild conditions... weakened HMF adsorption on Pd sites, promoting hydrogen spillover/ facilitating hydrogenation... mitigates catalyst poisoning... abundant active hydrogen species... pharmaceuticals, nucleoside analogs, specialty polymers" Related:  Designing Water Splitting Catalysts Using Waste-yeast Biomass https://news.unist.ac.kr/designing-water-splitting-catalysts-using-waste-yeast-biomass/ Accurate restricted transition-state shape selective hydrogenation of furfural over zeolite confined Cu catalyst https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1095299

https://scitechdaily.com/biotech-breakthrough-trees-engineered-to-replace-fossil-fuels/ "replaces need for petroleum-based chemicals, economically viable... thermophilic bacteria degrades cellulose in these trees... cheaper, more eco-friendly... microorganisms continually produce enzymes... high temperatures these thermophilic bacteria grow at avoids the need to otherwise create sterile conditions to avoid contamination... makes large amounts of acetone, ethanol, hydrogen gas from poplar trees, all in one step in a conventional industrial process, so more likely to be adopted" Related: The first genetic editing in spiders with CRISPR‐Cas yields colorful silk https://phys.org/news/2025-05-genetic-spiders-crisprcas-yields-silk.html#google_vignette

https://www.york.ac.uk/news-and-events/news/2022/research/biomass-availability-risk/ "if switch to BECCS delayed to second half of century, biomass production reduced... failure to achieve 2 °C goal jeopardising global food... delayed from 2040 to 2060... reduced yields of agricultural residue for biomass technologies decrease capacity of BECCS and increase global warming from 1.7 to 3.7 °C by 2200... decline in global average daily crop calories per capita from 2.1 million calories to 1.5 million calories... scale of food trade need to increase 80% from 2019 levels to avoid severe food shortages" Related: Speeding up sugar's conversion into fuel https://phys.org/news/2023-01-sugar-conversion-fuel.html Why this promising biofuel crop takes a summer break https://phys.org/news/2023-01-biofuel-crop-summer.html Rondo Energy Announces World’s Highest Temperature Thermal Energy Storage https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20230306005255/en/Rondo-Energy-Announces-World%E2%80%...

https://phys.org/news/2022-05-electrode-paves-biofuel-cells-electrochemical.html "Amphiphilic assembled multilayers composed of glucose oxidases in aqueous media and hydrophobic/conductive nanoparticles in nonpolar media were deposited onto cotton fiber/textile to form the anode, which has notably increased electron transfer efficiency and immobilization stability. The cathode was formed by sputtering platinum onto the gold nanoparticle-coated cotton fibrils to improve the efficiency of the oxygen reduction reaction" Related: A protective layer applied to gold nanoparticles can boost its resilience https://phys.org/news/2024-02-layer-gold-nanoparticles-boost-resilience.html Cemvita Achieves Breakthrough in SAF Feedstock Production https://nz.finance.yahoo.com/news/cemvita-achieves-breakthrough-saf-feedstock-121000729.html Study shows how organic molecules impact gold nanoparticles' electrochemical properties https://phys.org/news/2024-07-molecules-impact-gold-nanoparticle...

https://www.pnnl.gov/news-media/making-methane-co2-carbon-capture-grows-more-affordable "new method reduces the materials needed to run the reaction, the energy needed to fuel it and, ultimately, the selling price of the gas" Related: Catalyst study advances carbon-dioxide-to-ethanol conversion https://phys.org/news/2021-09-catalyst-advances-carbon-dioxide-to-ethanol-conversion.html Study explores the degradation mechanisms in Cu2O photoelectrodes for CO2 reduction https://techxplore.com/news/2021-12-explores-degradation-mechanisms-cu2o-photoelectrodes.html Copper Gets Us Closer to Using CO2 Pollution as Fuel https://www.electrochem.org/ecsnews/copper-gets-us-closer-using-co2-pollution-fuel/ Cu/CuNC dual-site interface promotes carbon dioxide electroreduction to ethanol https://phys.org/news/2023-02-cucunc-dual-site-interface-carbon-dioxide.html Researchers prepare ethylene by single-atom catalytic electroreduction of CO2 https://phys.org/news/2023-03-ethylene-single-atom-cat...