Volume 1 Issue 3, March 2024

Generative artificial intelligence will transform the way we design and operate chemical processes, argues Artur M. Schweidtmann.

We explore the challenges and opportunities for electrochemical energy storage technologies that harvest active materials from their surroundings. Progress hinges on advances in chemical engineering science related to membrane design; control of mass transport, reaction kinetics and precipitation at electrified interfaces; and regulation of electrocrystallization of metals through substrate design.

Researchers Katrina Knauer, Taylor Uekert and Alberta Carpenter, each at different stages of their careers, share perspectives on the national laboratory research ecosystem and how it can inspire transformative work in plastics recycling, sustainable manufacturing and beyond.

Fine chemical production mostly relies on petroleum-based chemical synthesis. Now, a process is established to produce benzyl acetate, the main fragrance molecule in jasmine scent, from renewable sugars with engineered bacteria.

Conventional linearly responsive methods for quantifying host–guest complexation in supramolecular chemistry have a fairly narrow dynamic range. Now, a logarithmically responsive electrochemical method promises to facilitate the measurement of complex equilibria over a larger dynamic range in host–guest systems.

A self-driving lab, called Fast-Cat, is developed for the rapid, autonomous Pareto-front mapping of homogeneous catalysts in high-pressure, high-temperature gas–liquid reactions. The efficacy of Fast-Cat was demonstrated in performing Pareto-front mappings of phosphorus-based ligands for the hydroformylation of olefins.

Water management is crucial for enhancing economic viability and minimizing the environmental impact of direct air capture (DAC) technologies, but the high energy intensity necessitates heat recovery techniques. This Perspective discusses several front-end and back-end strategies for coupling water management with heat integration in DAC processes.

Benzyl acetate is a valuable aromatic ester compound used in flavorings and fragrances. Now, a microbial approach is developed to produce benzyl acetate from d-glucose using metabolically engineered Escherichia coli strains and exploiting delayed co-culture strategies.

Optimizing CO₂-to-CO electrolyzers is important for developing tandem electrolysis processes. Now an efficient precious metal-free CO₂-to-CO electrolyzer cathode design allows operation under a low stoichiometric CO₂ excess ratio that yields a molar CO concentration of 70% in the exit stream along with a diagnostic approach to its catalytic and mass transport characteristics.

A self-driving catalysis laboratory, Fast-Cat, is presented for efficient high-throughput screening of high-pressure, high-temperature, gas–liquid reaction conditions using rhodium-catalyzed hydroformylation as a case study. Fast-Cat is used to Pareto map the reaction space and investigate the varying performance of several phosphorus-based hydroformylation ligands.

Quantifying the strength of noncovalent interactions in supramolecular host–guest systems is key to guiding molecular design for a desired application. Now, a quantitative relationship between noncovalent interactions and electrochemistry is established that provides a new dimension for investigations into noncovalent interactions and enables the control of electrochemical properties in battery engineering.

Katarina Babić reflects on the need to account for variability in plastic waste feedstocks when designing plastic upcycling and recycling processes.