Carbon DioxideFixation With Copper

BOTH THE ARTICLE "New Way To 'Fix' CO₂" (C&EN, Jan. 18, page 6) and the original report of work led by Elisabeth Bouwman of Leiden University (Science 2010, 327, 313) failed to note that the reduction of CO₂ by a Cu(I) complex has been observed at least twice before in the past decade. The first time was by Louis J. Farrugia, Stefan Lopinski, Paul A. Lovatt, and Robert D. Peacock (Inorg. Chem. 2001, 40, 558) and then by us (Acta Cryst. 2005, E61, m1904).

Moderation of global warming/climate change by this approach to CO₂ sequestration did not appear practical to us because the marketing and/or disposal of the resulting megatons of oxalic acid and/or oxalates would present significant new disposal problems. However, it will be interesting to see if, as the Science article suggests, a useful large-volume product such as methanol can be obtained as an end product.

Robert T. Stibrany
Joseph Potenza
Piscataway, N.J.
Harvey Schugar
Huntington, Vt.

Response From Elisabeth Bouwman

We saw the two earlier papers when we first found our oxalate structure. After the exciting finding of our system's electrocatalytic activity, regrettably I forgot to check that the two papers were included in the list of references, for which I apologize. It is the catalytic reactivity that may have a major impact on development of a sustainable society. This type of fundamental chemical advance could lead to methods for sequestering rising CO₂ levels while at the same time making useful chemicals, although the economic viability of such a process has yet to be determined.