The University of Nottingham

Many of the products society has come to rely on are derived from petrochemicals and an array of feedstocks needed to satisfy the voracious appetite of the petrochemical industry are produced from the refining of crude oil.

The search for more sustainable sources of feedstocks for petrochemical production is gathering pace and CO is, in principle, one of the options. Industry generates CO in abundance but the problem facing chemists has been how to convert CO directly into useable molecular compounds.

Dr Liddle said: “This is a significant step forward in the search for viable alternatives to crude oil — it means that a simple catalytic process for converting CO directly into more complex and value-added organic molecules may soon be in reach.”

The continued growth and stability of the global economy requires the ready availability of petrochemical feedstocks. However, uncertainty in their cost and supply and events such as the energy crisis in the 1970s has driven demand for developing alternative sources to crude oil.

Derived from methane and coal stocks, CO is an important industrial gas widely used in many industrial operations — for example in the production of aldehydes, methanol and pure nickel. It is readily produced by steam reforming reactions and as a result is an abundant resource that could be used in crude oil-free bulk hydrocarbon feedstock production.

But developing processes to fix CO into molecules of use are energy intensive. Many attempts have been made to make molecular compounds derived purely from CO fixation but they aren’t recyclable.

Using depleted uranium, chemists at The University of Nottingham have developed a three stage synthetic cycle in which an electron is transferred to CO molecules making them more reactive, a new molecule is then assembled, and then, crucially, the CO-derived molecule is liberated and the metal complex that creates the chemical reaction is retrieved so it can be used again.

Dr Liddle said: “Our work represents a step forward because we have closed a simple synthetic cycle for fixing carbon monoxide — the challenge now is to make this a catalytic cycle and to exploit the findings of this work with metals that industry could more easily use.”