Carbon dioxide A C-1 source for chemical industry

摘要

The immense and increasing quantity of carbon dioxide in the terrestrial atmosphere could represent a rich resource of a C-1 reagent for chemical industry. The most serious problem with this raw material is the difficulty of its activation. This could be overcome by high energy investment (mostly: by light through photosynthetic biomassj or by suitable activating reagent. The latter possibility is now exploited by several suitable reactions. A few of these transformations are already industrialized. The main goal of the present paper is to help focusing attention on existing and potential possibilities of CO2 chemistry, which could grow out as a serious and economic contribution to attempts at controlling climate change problems.