Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is broadly recognised as having the potential to play a key role in meeting climate change targets, delivering low carbon heat and power, decarbonising industry and, more recently, its ability to facilitate the net removal of CO2 from the atmosphere. However, despite this broad consensus and its technical maturity, CCS has not yet been deployed on a scale commensurate with the ambitions articulated a decade ago. Thus, in this paper we review the current state-of-the-art of CO2 capture, transport, utilisation and storage from a multi-scale perspective, moving from the global to molecular scales. In light of the COP21 commitments to limit warming to less than 2 °C, we extend the remit of this study to include the key negative emissions technologies (NETs) of bioenergy with CCS (BECCS), and direct air capture (DAC). Cognisant of the non-technical barriers to deploying CCS, we reflect on recent experience from the UK's CCS commercialisation programme and consider the commercial and political barriers to the large-scale deployment of CCS. In all areas, we focus on identifying and clearly articulating the key research challenges that could usefully be addressed in the coming decade.

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Carbon capture and storage (CCS): the way forward

Structure and nanostructure in ionic liquids.

C–H activation has surfaced as an increasingly powerful tool for molecular sciences, with notable applications to material sciences, crop protection, drug discovery, and pharmaceutical industries, among others. Despite major advances, the vast majority of these C–H functionalizations required precious 4d or 5d transition metal catalysts. Given the cost-effective and sustainable nature of earth-abundant first row transition metals, the development of less toxic, inexpensive 3d metal catalysts for C–H activation has gained considerable recent momentum as a significantly more environmentally-benign and economically-attractive alternative. Herein, we provide a comprehensive overview on first row transition metal catalysts for C–H activation until summer 2018.

3d Transition Metals for C-H Activation.

Ionic liquids are remarkable chemical compounds, which find applications in many areas of modern science. Because of their highly tunable nature and exceptional properties, ionic liquids have become essential players in the fields of synthesis and catalysis, extraction, electrochemistry, analytics, biotechnology, etc. Apart from physical and chemical features of ionic liquids, their high biological activity has been attracting significant attention from biochemists, ecologists, and medical scientists. This Review is dedicated to biological activities of ionic liquids, with a special emphasis on their potential employment in pharmaceutics and medicine. The accumulated data on the biological activity of ionic liquids, including their antimicrobial and cytotoxic properties, are discussed in view of possible applications in drug synthesis and drug delivery systems. Dedicated attention is given to a novel active pharmaceutical ingredient-ionic liquid (API-IL) concept, which suggests using traditional drugs in ...

Biological Activity of Ionic Liquids and Their Application in Pharmaceutics and Medicine.

https://www.cell.com/cell/pdf/S0092-8674(10)01057-3.pdf

Systematic Protein Location Mapping Reveals Five Principal Chromatin Types in Drosophila Cells

http://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdf/10.1021/acs.organomet.7b00605

Toxicity of Metal Compounds: Knowledge and Myths

Rapid progress in the field of ionic liquids in recent decades led to the development of many outstanding energy-conversion processes, catalytic systems, synthetic procedures, and important practical applications. Task-specific optimization emerged as a sharpening stone for the fine-tuning of structure of ionic liquids, which resulted in unprecedented efficiency at the molecular level. Ionic-liquid systems showed promising opportunities in the development of green and sustainable technologies; however, the chemical nature of ionic liquids is not intrinsically green. Many ionic liquids were found to be toxic or even highly toxic towards cells and living organisms. In this Review, we show that biological activity and cytotoxicity of ionic liquids dramatically depend on the nature of a biological system. An ionic liquid may be not toxic for particular cells or organisms, but may demonstrate high toxicity towards another target present in the environment. Thus, a careful selection of biological activity data is a must for the correct assessment of chemical technologies involving ionic liquids. In addition to the direct biological activity (immediate response), several indirect effects and aftereffects are of primary importance. The following principal factors were revealed to modulate toxicity of ionic liquids: i) length of an alkyl chain in the cation; ii) degree of functionalization in the side chain of the cation; iii) anion nature; iv) cation nature; and v) mutual influence of anion and cation.

Toxicity of Ionic Liquids: Eco(cyto)activity as Complicated, but Unavoidable Parameter for Task-Specific Optimization

Environmental profiles for the selected metals were compiled on the basis of available data on their biological activities. Analysis of the profiles suggests that the concept of toxic heavy metals and safe nontoxic alternatives based on lighter metals should be re-evaluated. Comparison of the toxicological data indicates that palladium, platinum, and gold compounds, often considered heavy and toxic, may in fact be not so dangerous, whereas complexes of nickel and copper, typically assumed to be green and sustainable alternatives, may possess significant toxicities, which is also greatly affected by the solubility in water and biological fluids. It appears that the development of new catalysts and novel applications should not rely on the existing assumptions concerning toxicity/nontoxicity. Overall, the available experimental data seem insufficient for accurate evaluation of biological activity of these metals and its modulation by the ligands. Without dedicated experimental measurements for particular metal/ligand frameworks, toxicity should not be used as a "selling point" when describing new catalysts.

Which Metals are Green for Catalysis? Comparison of the Toxicities of Ni, Cu, Fe, Pd, Pt, Rh, and Au Salts.

The Carbohydrate Structure Databases (CSDBs, http://csdb.glycoscience.ru) store structural, bibliographic, taxonomic, NMR spectroscopic, and other data on natural carbohydrates and their derivatives published in the scientific literature. The CSDB project was launched in 2005 for bacterial saccharides (as BCSDB). Currently, it includes two parts, the Bacterial CSDB and the Plant&Fungal CSDB. In March 2015, these databases were merged to the single CSDB. The combined CSDB includes information on bacterial and archaeal glycans and derivatives (the coverage is close to complete), as well as on plant and fungal glycans and glycoconjugates (almost all structures published up to 1998). CSDB is regularly updated via manual expert annotation of original publications. Both newly annotated data and data imported from other databases are manually curated. The CSDB data are exportable in a number of modern formats, such as GlycoRDF. CSDB provides additional services for simulation of (1)H, (13)C and 2D NMR spectra of saccharides, NMR-based structure prediction, glycan-based taxon clustering and other.

Ksenia S. Egorova

Papers

Biological Activity of Ionic Liquids and Their Application in Pharmaceutics and Medicine.

Toxicity of Metal Compounds: Knowledge and Myths

Toxicity of Ionic Liquids: Eco(cyto)activity as Complicated, but Unavoidable Parameter for Task-Specific Optimization

Which Metals are Green for Catalysis? Comparison of the Toxicities of Ni, Cu, Fe, Pd, Pt, Rh, and Au Salts.

Carbohydrate structure database merged from bacterial, archaeal, plant and fungal parts