A research team led by two professors from National Chiao Tung University’s applied chemistry department has become one of the first to detect and monitor the Criegee intermediate CH2OO, a molecule originally postulated in 1949, but only recently discovered.
“Criegee intermediates are carbonyl oxides postulated to play a key role in the reactions of ozone with unsaturated hydrocarbons” the team said.
The reactions form an important mechanism for removing unsaturated hydrocarbons and producing hydroxide in the atmosphere, it added.
Criegee intermediates were first proposed by Rudolf Criegee in 1949, but for decades scientists were unable to directly detect and identify the molecules due to their highly active nature and short lifespan.
Last year, a team of researchers from Sandia National Laboratories in the US reported direct measurements of reactions of a gas-phase Criegee intermediate using photo-ionization mass spectrometry.
National Chiao Tung University’s research team, which includes professors Henryk Witek and Lee Yuan-pern (李遠鵬), graduate student Su Yu-te (蘇育德) and doctoral student Huang Yu-hsuan (黃郁琁), has discovered the intermediate’s transient infrared absorption spectrum.
The team said the findings had been possible thanks to a newly improved step-scan Fourier-transform spectrometer that the laboratory had assembled itself.
The discovery may contribute to increased understanding of many different aspects of the atmosphere, such as acid rain, pollutants and climate change.
At a university event on Saturday, school president Wu Yen-hua (吳妍華) praised the team’s achievement, saying that it was an honor that the team’s “100 percent local” research was published in the internationally renowned Science magazine on Friday last week.
INFRASTRUCTURE: Work on the second segment, from Kaohsiung to Pingtung, is expected to begin in 2028 and be completed by 2039, the railway bureau said Planned high-speed rail (HSR) extensions would blanket Taiwan proper in four 90-minute commute blocs to facilitate regional economic and livelihood integration, Railway Bureau Deputy Director-General Yang Cheng-chun (楊正君) said in an interview published yesterday. A project to extend the high-speed rail from Zuoying Station in Kaohsiung to Pingtung County’s Lioukuaicuo Township (六塊厝) is the first part of the bureau’s greater plan to expand rail coverage, he told the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times). The bureau’s long-term plan is to build a loop to circle Taiwan proper that would consist of four sections running from Taipei to Hualien, Hualien to
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