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The magic of plasma chemistry: Tess van Eeden shows research work in video Universiteit van Nederland

Published on January 20, 2025

Travelling by plane without feeling guilty and saying goodbye to a large part of the CO₂ problem. That sounds like magic, doesn't it? In a Universiteit van Nederland video chemist Tess van Eeden explains how plasma chemistry can help to make the chemical industry more sustainable.

Tess starts her video by telling: "In the beginning, when you start working with it, it's a little bit like magic. But in practice it's actually like a kind of a microwave." With this 'microwave' Tess means DIFFER's chemical energy research facility in which you can make the building blocks for fuels and plastics. This happens with the air we breath, which contains valuable molecules, and is abundant and free. 

Why researchers like Tess are doing this? So that in the future we won't need any oil or natural gas at all for our flights, fertilizers and plastics. If we want to get more kerosene out of sustainable sources, the 'CO₂ microwave' showed in the video might be an attractive alternative. Curious how this works? Tess tells you all about it in this video.

Video content:

  • 0:00 How to fly carbon-neutral?
  • 1:44 Basic chemistry lesson
  • 3:05 How do you make the building blocks for kerosene and fertilizers?
  • 4:36 Why do we need fertilizers?
  • 6:10 How do you make kerosene from CO₂?
  • 7:04 How promising is this project?

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