Advances in Chemical Conversions for Mitigating Carbon Dioxide

Global environmental problems, especially global warming caused by the accelerative accumulation of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, are of great importance for humans. The world's population is now approaching 6 billion, and is still increasing. Developments in communication systems and transportation tools have made the circulation of information, technologies and materials easier, which results in rapid economic growth, particularly in the East and Southeastern Asian countries. Increased affluence leads to an increased consumption of fossil fuels. Inevitably, this leads to an increase in carbon dioxide emission and environmentally hazardous materials which in turn precipitates climatic changes on a global scale. Recent studies showed that the increase in carbon dioxide emission for last year was the highest in the past seven years, and the total amount of carbon dioxide emission from all over the world reached 6.5 billion tons. Furthermore, one cannot overlook the report which appeared recently in Nature, that the floor-area of the iceberg in the South Pole has already decreased by 25% in the past five decades. Over 260 scientists and engineers from 21 countries who had a strong interest and wished to contribute to solve the carbon dioxide problem attended this conference. The papers presented in this volume cover most of the possibilities of the chemical conversion of carbon dioxide.

Special Lecture. International Energy Agency action on climate change issues (M.A. Preville, H.J. Koch). Plenary Lectures. Japan's basic strategy concerning countermeasures to mitigate climate change (T. Namiki). Research and development on new synthetic routes for basic chemicals by catalytic hydrogenation of CO2 (H. Arakawa). New approaches in CO2 reduction (A. Fujishima, D.A. Tryk, T. Rao). Development of electrocatalysts for carbon dioxide reduction using polydentate ligands to probe structure-activity relationships (D.L. DuBois). Carbon dioxide and microalgae (N. Kurano, T. Sasaki, S. Miyachi). Perspectives of carbon dioxide utilization in the synthesis of chemicals. Coupling chemistry with biotechnology (M. Aresta). Keynote Lectures. Scope of studies on CO2 mitigation (K. Yamada). Hydrogenation of CO2 towards methanol: Influence of the catalysts composition and preparation on the catalytic behavior (R. Kieffer, L. Udron). Photochemical carbon dioxide reduction with metal complexes: Differences between cobalt and nickel macrocycles (E. Fujita et al.). Electrochemical reduction of CO2 at metallic electrodes (J. Augustynski, P. Kedzierzawski, B. Jermann). Super-RuBisCO: Improvement of photosynthetic performances of plants (A. Yokota). Organometallic reactions with CO2 - Catalyst design and mechanisms (E. Dinjus). Oral Presentations (106 papers). Subject Index.