Earth seems to be the only planet in the Solar System capable of sustaining life, as currently known. This sustainability is the result of a few cosmic coincidences such as the proximity to the Sun, liquid water, a stable magnetic field, a large satellite for rotation stabilization and a gas giant like Jupiter to shield us from large meteorites.

For the above reasons, humankind thrived in the last ~ 4-6 million years and requires considerable amounts of fuel to meet its needs for heat, light, electricity and motion. The use of coal and oil has spared the axing of forests for wood and the killing of whales for oil. However, we are reaching the limits of fossil fuel utilization. The dependence of our society on fossil fuels as a source of energy has been compromised by the generation of greenhouse gases and its probable future exhaustion. Nuclear fission does not seem to be a viable long-term substitute because of intrinsic low yields and environmental hazards. These observations point out the need for alternative and renewable energy sources.

In this talk, Professor Claudio Verani will visit some of these environmentally friendly approaches that take advantage of wind, hydraulic and geothermal sources and then focus on solar energy. We will discuss how the sun converts hydrogen into helium emitting radiant energy that reaches the Earth in the form of light and heat. The harvesting of this energy and conversion into chemical energy via water splitting is the basic premise of the so-called “Hydrogen Economy.” We will discuss the triumphs and shortcomings of this approach.

When

Friday, Feb. 18, 2011 at 7 p.m.

About Claudio Verani

Claudio Verani obtained his M.Sc. (1996, honors) in Inorganic Chemistry at the Federal University of Santa Catarina, Brazil under the guidance of Ademir Neves. His Ph.D. came in 2000 from the Max-Planck Institute for Bioinorganic Chemistry and the RuhrUniversity Bochum, Germany working under the supervision of Karl Wieghardt and Phalguni Chaudhuri, developing bioinorganic models for multimetal sites.

He worked as a post-doctoral researcher from Sept. 2000 to Aug. 2002 in Kenneth Karlin’s group modeling aspects of cytochrome-c-oxidase activity at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. At Wayne State since Sept. 2002, his main interests involve the use of coordination chemistry in the development of metal catalysts for water splitting and metallodrugs.

His group utilizes several approaches from multistep synthesis, to spectroscopy, electrochemistry, magnetism, mesogenicity, amphiphilicity, Langmuir-Blodgett film formation, atomic force microscopy and computational calculations. Funding: WSU, ACS-PRF, Nano@Wayne, NSF, DOE.