Chemistry

About biofuels
“A biofuel is a source of energy that is derived from material that was once living. This sounds simple enough, but there are so many ways of generating biofuels that things quickly get complicated.

“In its simplest form, burning wood on a fire for warmth is using a biofuel. The wood was once alive and part of a living tree and it became ‘energyrich’ through the process of photosynthesis. This, as many of us know, is where the plant uses the energy from sunlight to allow it to take carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and convert it into sugars, and ultimately into all the carbon containing structures within the tree. These structures contain energy that has been converted from the sunlight.

“Burning the wood allows this ‘trapped energy’ to be liberated as heat and also light. Indeed, any plant material that can be burnt can be used in a similar way. “You may not be aware that some of the electricity you use is produced by burning biomass. The largest power station in the UK, Drax in North Yorkshire, produces around seven per cent of the UK’s electricity and burns around 300,000 tonnes of biomass a year. It is looking to increase the amount of biofuel it uses to around 1.5 million tonnes, at the expense of the fossil fuel coal that it normally uses.

Advantages of biofuel over fossil fuel
“There are advantages to using biofuels compared with fossil fuels such as coal that are derived from plants that were alive millions of years ago. To produce a fossil fuel, plants died, became buried and subsequently compressed and ultimately produced fossil fuels such as coal and oil, which are energy-rich in the same way as living plant material is.

“Burning fossil fuels, however, releases both the energy and the carbon dioxide which was trapped millions of years before. The energy is useful, but the carbon dioxide is widely accepted to be a cause of global warming. “Burning a biofuel, however, releases carbon dioxide that was trapped only a few years prior. It is therefore classed as ‘carbon neutral’ and won’t cause an increase in global warming. “We have already seen that wood can be used as biofuel but there is a lot of interest in using certain types of grasses such as Miscanthus which can grow rapidly, using minimal inputs of fertiliser, and can be grown on land that is not used for growing agricultural crops.

These last two points are important, as producing fertiliser requires energy and so it is nonsensical to use energy-requiring fertiliser to produce something that is going to be used as an energy source. Also, using land for growing biofuel that could be used for producing agricultural crops is hard to justify in a time of increasing food shortage.

“Indeed, the increases in the global cost of wheat in 2008/09 were partly caused by poor worldwide harvests, but also by the USA using around 25 per cent of its harvest to produce biofuel for transport purposes.

Using other fuels
“The transport fuels petrol and diesel can both be substituted by liquid biofuels. Both the sugars and starches that are found in plants’ stems and seeds can be fermented to produce alcohol such as ethanol. This is what happens when beer is produced – barley seeds rich in starch have the starch converted to sugar and then yeasts break the sugar down to produce ethanol. In the case of beer, we drink the ethanol but it can be used to produce bioethanol and used as a replacement for petrol. “Biodiesel is produced in a slightly different way: the oils found in many seeds and nuts of plants such as sunflowers, oil seed rape or palm oil can be “The problem with using seeds and nuts as a biofuel is that you are using a potential food source for fuel purposes”

The problem with using seeds and nuts is that you are using a potential food source for fuel purposes. Additionally, growing huge areas of plants such as palm oil, some of which is used for biofuel, has caused large tracts of biodiverse rainforest habitat
to be cut down, threatening such species as the orangutan.

“Scientists have found solutions to such problems. Some transport biofuels such as the biodiesel produced from the fruit of the Jatropha tree do not have such disadvantages. Jatropha fruit is inedible and, also importantly, the tree can tolerate drought conditions and grow on land unsuitable for agricultural crops. One example where Jatropha has been used successfully is in India where the diesel train that runs from Delhi to Mumbai uses 15 per cent biodiesel derived from Jatropha. “Biofuels, though, are not a full answer to our energy needs.

Many experts believe that biofuels have an increasing and significant role to play in the generation of our fuels, but in the UK particularly there is extensive pressure on our land resource from population growth and the requirements for both housing and for food production. Biofuels are part of the answer, alongside other renewable sources of energy such as wind and solar power.

“In some countries with greater land reserves than the UK, biofuels could be even more useful. In Brazil, for instance, 40 per cent of cars run on bioethanol and there are plans to increase this percentage. “The overall answer to our fuel issues is to use less fuel in the first instance, to decrease our reliance on fossil fuels, increase our reliance on biofuels and to work for a solution that requires global initiatives to maximise the use of non-agricultural land for producing biofuel crops.”
 

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• S173 Plants and people
• Photo by: Matt Murf

The Dow Chemical sponsorship of London 2012 tarnishes the Olympic ideal, and insults the memory of the tens of thousands of victims of the 1984 Bhopal disaster, argues Dick Skellington.

The news that the 2012 London Olympics will be sponsored by Dow Chemical, has caused consternation in India. There have been calls to the Indian Olympic Association to boycott the games. Dow Chemical is the company that bought the infamous Union Carbide Corporation (UCC), responsible for one of the worst environmental disasters of modern times when up to 10,000 people died at the corporation's Bhopal plant in India during December 1984. Fifteen thousand more victims are estimated to have perished since. 

As part of the sponsorship Dow Chemical will produce a £7m decorative wrap to cover the external facade of the Olympic Stadium. Both London Organising Olympic Committee (LOC) chief, Sebastian Coe and London Mayor Boris Johnson have enthusiastically welcomed Dow, calling the deal the 'icing on the cake', but campaigners seeking justice for Bhopal gas victims are up in arms. Amnesty International has questioned whether the deal, which gives Dow Chemical 'exclusive marketing rights' to the main Olympic Stadium, complies with London's 2012 ethical code. 

There is nothing past tense about the situation in Bhopal. Living around the former Union Carbide factory site are some of the poorest people in the city, who for the past 27 years have been slowly poisoned by contaminated groundwater which they use for drinking, cooking and bathing.  

Dow continue to maintain that they can not be held responsible for what happened at Bhopal before they took over UCC. But this stance has caused uproar in India, and a spokesman for the International Campaign for Justice In Bhopal described it as 'offensive'. He said: 'This crass attempt by Dow to detoxify their brand won't wash with the thousands of victims of the Bhopal disaster, nor ordinary Londoners."  

What happened in Bhopal
Early in the morning of 3 December 3 1984, forty tonnes of a toxin called methyl isocyanate (MIC) leaked from the Union Carbide pesticide factory and settled over the slums in Bhopal, killing thousands as they slept.  Survivors’ leader Champa Devi Shukla explained ‘The pain was unbearable. We were writhing, coughing and slobbering froth. People just got up and ran in whatever clothes they were wearing. Some were in their underclothes, others wore nothing at all. It was complete panic. Among the crowd of people, dogs and even cows were running and trying to save their lives and crushing people as they ran.’

In the stampedes through narrow alleys many were trampled to death. Some went into convulsions and dropped dead. Most, struggling to breathe as the gas ripped their lungs apart, drowned in their own body fluids. 

In the years since, more people have died of their injuries and illnesses. In some places the dead were so many that it was impossible to walk without stepping on them. The hospitals were full of the dying. Doctors did not know how to treat them because they did not know which gas or gases had leaked, and Union Carbide would not release the information, claiming it was a ‘trade secret’.

Toxic legacy
The problem for Dow is that many of the issues in Bhopal remain unresolved, long after the disaster people are still dying, and thousands still suffer from related health problems. The site of the former pesticide plant, now abandoned, is still polluted by poison.

In June 2010, after years of protracted legal action against UCC, a court in Bhopal sentenced eight former plant employees, all Indians, to two years each in jail over the gas plant leak.  The convictions were the first since the disaster.  Campaigners said the court verdict was ‘too little and too late’.

Union Carbide and the Dow Chemical Company still refuse to publish the results of studies into the effects of MIC. UCC paid £300 in compensation to each survivor, money that is meant to last the rest of their lives. 

Over the years the survivors have received little medical help. In 1994 the Indian government, eager to put the gas leak behind it, shut down all research studies into the effects of the gas, just as new epidemics of cancers, diabetes, eye defects and crippling menstrual disorders were beginning to appear. 

Abandoned by all who had a duty of care, the survivors launched the Bhopal Medical Appeal and set up the Sambhavna Clinic which offers survivors free treatment.

Still poisoning
A private Union Carbide memo, obtained via a US court case, reveals that as far back as 1989 the company had tested soil and water inside the factory. Fish introduced to the samples died instantly. The danger to drinking water supplies was obvious, but Union Carbide issued no warnings. Its bosses in India and the USA watched silently as families already ruined by the gases drank and bathed their children in poisoned water. 

The situation did not improve after the state government took possession of the site in 1998. The following year, when Greenpeace was testing soil and water around the factory, it found carbon tetrachloride in one of the hand pumps at levels 682 times higher than the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) limit. In August 2009, a sample of water from the same hand pump was analysed by a Greenpeace laboratory in the UK. Carbon tetrachloride was found at 4,880 times the EPA limit. In the last decade, the water has become seven times more poisonous. The Indian government has filed a fresh demand for $1.1 billion in compensation from Dow, but Dow continues to deny responsibility for the legacy of the disaster.

The Bhopal disaster is continuing. Scores of children are born with unimaginable congenital defects: no eyes, fused fingers, physical and mental retardation and virtual catatonia are all commonplace. Entire families suffer chronic ill-health and the incidence of various cancers and reproductive problems are far higher than in other parts of India. The factory and its poisons remain in the heart of Bhopal. Union Carbide and Dow have not faced justice. 

The problem for the LOC is that this single act of sponsorship risks damages the Olympic ideal. Should we not respect humanity more than we respect profit? It is time that Dow Chemical cleaned up Bhopal, and that the LOC looked at its own ethics, and approached Dow seeking a withdrawal of the controversial sponsorship. If they did, there is no doubt that other bidders would come in with the lost £7m.  

There is a Facebook campaign seeking a review of the sponsorship decision.   

Dick  Skellington 28 November 2011

Cartoon by Catherine Pain 

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An Open University cancer researcher is a signatory to a letter in today's Times Higher Education, accusing a Research Councils' initiative of compromising UK academic researchers'  freedom.

Dr Sotiris Missailidis is one of 49 distinguished academics, including several Nobel Laureates, who urge fellow-researchers not to comply with the Pathways to Impact  initiative, which they say  'corrupts researchers' thinking' and 'wastes taxpayers' money'. 

They also accuse Universities and Science minister David Willetts of ignoring evidence sent to him in support of terminating the initiative.

Pathways to Impact obliges those submitting research proposals to Research Councils to identify the potential economic and societal benefits of their research project, and outline how they expect this will be achieved. 

 Dr Missailidis and his fellow signatories suggest that researchers submit responses such as: "I am not competent to assess the future potential socio-economic impact of this proposal".  

The letter published today 14  April is a follow-up to one written to the Times Higher on the same subject in 2009. 

Dr Missailidis is a world authority on the use of molecules called aptamers to target cancer. He is chair of the Open University module S807 Molecules in medicine and SK123 Understanding cancer, and editor of the book The Cancer Clock. 

Useful Links

• Profile of Dr Sotiris Missailidis 
• Dr Sotiris Missailidis talks about his cancer research

How have individual female scientists contributed to the advancement of science through time? To celebrate the 100th anniversary of International Women’s Day and to mark International Year of Chemistry 2011, the Open University asked some of the female scientists currently working in its Faculty of Science, to nominate their personal choice of outstanding woman of science. The female scientists nominated include several Nobel Prize Laureates, such as Marie Curie, Dorothy Hodgkin and American geneticist Barbara McClintock. The academics also talk about their own experiences of being a woman in the sciences today.

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