[Music]
let’s take a deep breath when I count to
three one two three I know this is
obvious we just breathe in oxygen and
breathe out co2 imagine taking co2 from
our breath and making high-value
products like petrol and diesel to pump
in our cars plastics diapers for babies
even better to make a world-famous
Belgium beer as a chemical engineer and
a computational chemist I work on the
chemistry to make this possible what
really excites me about this chemistry
is not that one day I could turn my
friends bed into a beer I know that
would be really cool and handy in a
party maybe I will have a lot of friends
but what really excites me about this
chemistry what if we take co2 from this
guy a petrochemical plant which uses
fossil fuels worldwide petrochemical
plants released billions of tons of co2
into the atmosphere every year I looked
it up
a typical petrochemical plant release
more co2 than all the seven billion
people on the earth right now and guess
what there are hundreds of petrochemical
plants out there so can you imagine the
impact of this industry in climate
change and global warming so I have been
thinking about waste and pollutants for
quite some time in fact from my high
school days I grew up in Sri Lanka and
on my way to high school I used to pass
by this oil refinery so from far I could
see how the waste and pollutants release
into the atmosphere
after my high school I moved to
Singapore to pursue my university
studies to become a chemical engineer
over there I had the opportunity to
in a petrochemical plant I we our
business the waste and pollutants
release into the atmosphere now in
Belgium I am working with waste of base
from fossil fuels like co2 so I always
get the question why can’t we get rid of
fossil fuels and use renewable energies
it turns out fossil fuels form the
fundamental building block of our
society they’re cheap abundant contains
large amount of energy so even though we
desire a world where we no longer need
fossil fuels we are not quite there yet
so can we at least deal with the waste
from fossil fuels can we consider co2 as
a resource not as a waste
Buckminster Fuller an American professor
famous for his buckyballs just looks
like the chemistry of food chemist
football of chemistry put it best when
he said pollution is nothing but the
resources we are not harvesting we
allowed we allow them to disperse
because we have been ignorant of their
value so using chemistry we can convert
co2 into high-value products well this
sounds like a science fiction or coming
up with a really complex process but
actually the way we do is quite simple
co2 has one carbon and two oxygen atoms
so what are these high value products
like petrol and diesel so they
essentially long chains of carbon and
hydrogen atoms
I guess everyone here played with Legos
before right so when you play with Legos
we take one Lego block at a time and we
connect this Lego blocks to get a great
structure can we do the same with co2 so
if we can take the carbon atom from co2
we can use it as a carbon one building
block so we can take this carbon
building blocks connect with hydrogen
and we can get this high value products
like
DISA bit of a challenge because co2 is
very stable meaning it doesn’t like to
break its carbon and oxygen bonds so to
help with this we need something called
catalyst so catalysts will activate the
co2 and it will break its carbon and
oxygen bonds so catalysts are materials
which increases the speed of reaction
without being consumed I like to think
catalyst as the person who helps to
register marriage during your wedding
ceremony so the marriage registrar has a
key role in determining how fast the
ceremony takes place but not permanently
change because of the ceremony
unlike the couple who are permanently
changed because of the marriage
sometimes for the better sometimes for
not so better so the next question comes
to our mind how can we design a catalyst
which can help us to convert co2 into
high-value products traditionally
scientists synthesize hundreds of
materials and do thousands of
experiments to find a good catalyst this
is trial and error approach it takes
lots of lots of time money and energy
well I design catalyst using computers
the aim is to really understand the
chemistry happens at atomic level which
is something experiments can’t do so
this commission is completely safe and
we only need to solve shooting the
equation so before you ask shooting is
the scientists with the Cathy Nawabs but
solving shooting the equation is also
difficult therefore we can only consider
small catalyst structures and to solve
these small català structures mini
giant supercomputers like this so with
the help of this giant supercomputers we
can convert co2 into high value products
so we are developing catalysts to
convert this and I hope one day we can
sit together and drink a beer which is
made from co2 so does this mean co2 is
good should we continue to make more co2
they know because we are releasing way
too much co2 into the atmosphere then
what we can actually can capture and
utilize so here are two ideas were
sharing
first there’s nothing called waste just
like the case of co2 our history is full
of examples of things where we once
considered it to be a waste but later we
realized there of their good resources
second is a message of hope I know all
the news out there about pollution is
negative and there and rightfully so but
that doesn’t mean there’s no hope
scientists are working around the clock
and hopefully the solutions are around
the corner thank you very much
[Applause]
let’s take a deep breath when I count to
three one two three I know this is
obvious we just breathe in oxygen and
breathe out co2 imagine taking co2 from
our breath and making high-value
products like petrol and diesel to pump
in our cars plastics diapers for babies
even better to make a world-famous
Belgium beer as a chemical engineer and
a computational chemist I work on the
chemistry to make this possible what
really excites me about this chemistry
is not that one day I could turn my
friends bed into a beer I know that
would be really cool and handy in a
party maybe I will have a lot of friends
but what really excites me about this
chemistry what if we take co2 from this
guy a petrochemical plant which uses
fossil fuels worldwide petrochemical
plants released billions of tons of co2
into the atmosphere every year I looked
it up
a typical petrochemical plant release
more co2 than all the seven billion
people on the earth right now and guess
what there are hundreds of petrochemical
plants out there so can you imagine the
impact of this industry in climate
change and global warming so I have been
thinking about waste and pollutants for
quite some time in fact from my high
school days I grew up in Sri Lanka and
on my way to high school I used to pass
by this oil refinery so from far I could
see how the waste and pollutants release
into the atmosphere
after my high school I moved to
Singapore to pursue my university
studies to become a chemical engineer
over there I had the opportunity to
in a petrochemical plant I we our
business the waste and pollutants
release into the atmosphere now in
Belgium I am working with waste of base
from fossil fuels like co2 so I always
get the question why can’t we get rid of
fossil fuels and use renewable energies
it turns out fossil fuels form the
fundamental building block of our
society they’re cheap abundant contains
large amount of energy so even though we
desire a world where we no longer need
fossil fuels we are not quite there yet
so can we at least deal with the waste
from fossil fuels can we consider co2 as
a resource not as a waste
Buckminster Fuller an American professor
famous for his buckyballs just looks
like the chemistry of food chemist
football of chemistry put it best when
he said pollution is nothing but the
resources we are not harvesting we
allowed we allow them to disperse
because we have been ignorant of their
value so using chemistry we can convert
co2 into high-value products well this
sounds like a science fiction or coming
up with a really complex process but
actually the way we do is quite simple
co2 has one carbon and two oxygen atoms
so what are these high value products
like petrol and diesel so they
essentially long chains of carbon and
hydrogen atoms
I guess everyone here played with Legos
before right so when you play with Legos
we take one Lego block at a time and we
connect this Lego blocks to get a great
structure can we do the same with co2 so
if we can take the carbon atom from co2
we can use it as a carbon one building
block so we can take this carbon
building blocks connect with hydrogen
and we can get this high value products
like
DISA bit of a challenge because co2 is
very stable meaning it doesn’t like to
break its carbon and oxygen bonds so to
help with this we need something called
catalyst so catalysts will activate the
co2 and it will break its carbon and
oxygen bonds so catalysts are materials
which increases the speed of reaction
without being consumed I like to think
catalyst as the person who helps to
register marriage during your wedding
ceremony so the marriage registrar has a
key role in determining how fast the
ceremony takes place but not permanently
change because of the ceremony
unlike the couple who are permanently
changed because of the marriage
sometimes for the better sometimes for
not so better so the next question comes
to our mind how can we design a catalyst
which can help us to convert co2 into
high-value products traditionally
scientists synthesize hundreds of
materials and do thousands of
experiments to find a good catalyst this
is trial and error approach it takes
lots of lots of time money and energy
well I design catalyst using computers
the aim is to really understand the
chemistry happens at atomic level which
is something experiments can’t do so
this commission is completely safe and
we only need to solve shooting the
equation so before you ask shooting is
the scientists with the Cathy Nawabs but
solving shooting the equation is also
difficult therefore we can only consider
small catalyst structures and to solve
these small català structures mini
giant supercomputers like this so with
the help of this giant supercomputers we
can convert co2 into high value products
so we are developing catalysts to
convert this and I hope one day we can
sit together and drink a beer which is
made from co2 so does this mean co2 is
good should we continue to make more co2
they know because we are releasing way
too much co2 into the atmosphere then
what we can actually can capture and
utilize so here are two ideas were
sharing
first there’s nothing called waste just
like the case of co2 our history is full
of examples of things where we once
considered it to be a waste but later we
realized there of their good resources
second is a message of hope I know all
the news out there about pollution is
negative and there and rightfully so but
that doesn’t mean there’s no hope
scientists are working around the clock
and hopefully the solutions are around
the corner thank you very much
[Applause]
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