Hot vents on seafloor could produce chemical to replace oil

Hot vents on seafloor could produce chemical to replace oil

The seafloor chemical could help make environment-friendly products.

Researchers have found that hot beds on the seabed could have spontaneously produced organic molecules to produce life. UCL chemists have studies that show hot the minerals coming from these hot beds have similar chemical properties to enzymes. Enzymes are the biological molecules that have reactions in living organisms.

As reported, the discovery by the chemist explains how the building blocks of organic life sprouts from seabeds that have hot beds. These hydrothermal vents may have been a huge part of making life on Earth.

The explanation is that there is a lot of CO2 dissolved in the water and could provide the carbon that is needed for life organisms to develop. The energy is also there since the water is hot and turbulent around these hot beds.

Researchers used laboratory experiments with super computer simulations to investigate the conditions and if they could possibly be true. It turns out that there are crystal structures inside these vents shooting out hot water and act as catalysts. They cause chemical changes and eventually end up acting like enzymes act with living organisms.

This chemical reaction that is believed to happen in hot beds could also be a replacement for oil, since the reaction causes heat and pressure. The method causes carbon-based chemicals out of CO2 and it could be used to make plastics, fertilizers, and fuels instead of using oils.

If the study proves to be very effective, the use of oil could be diminished for environmental reasons. The process would have to be scaled up to make it commercial and to be made as a product to replace oil.

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