Chemistry Nobel Given for Molecules That Aid Carbon Capture

(Bloomberg) -- Scientists from Japan, the UK and Jordan were awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for creating molecular constructions that can be used to capture carbon dioxide or harvest water from desert air.

Susumu Kitagawa, Richard Robson and Omar M. Yaghi will share the 11 million-krona ($1.2 million) award “for the development of metal-organic frameworks,” the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm said in a statement Wednesday.

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The laureates created molecular constructions with large spaces through which gases and other chemicals can flow, the Committee said. “These constructions, metal-organic frameworks, can be used to harvest water from desert air, capture carbon dioxide, store toxic gases or catalyze chemical reactions.”

There’s potential for use in industrial-scale processes. The electronics industry can now use the materials to contain some of the toxic gases required to produce semiconductors, and materials that can capture carbon dioxide from factories and power stations are being tested, with the aim of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Some may be used for breaking down traces of pharmaceuticals in the environment.

Kitagawa is a professor at Kyoto University in his native Japan, while Robson, who was born in the UK, is a professor at the University of Melbourne in Australia. Yaghi, a professor at University of California, Berkeley, was born in Jordan.

“Some researchers believe that metal–organic frameworks have such huge potential that they will be the material of the twenty-first century,” the Committee said. “Time will tell.”

Last year’s chemistry Nobel was awarded to two Google DeepMind scientists, who shared the prize with a US professor for their breakthrough research into proteins. Famous discoveries to have earned the award include mapping the structure of penicillin in 1964 and the means by which plants convert carbon dioxide into carbohydrates in 1961.

Annual prizes for achievements in physics, chemistry, medicine, literature and peace were established in the will of Alfred Nobel, the Swedish inventor of dynamite, who died in 1896. A prize in economic sciences was added by Sweden’s central bank in 1968.

The laureates are announced through Oct. 13 in Stockholm, with the exception of the Nobel Peace Prize, whose recipients are selected on Friday by the Norwegian Nobel Committee in Oslo.