Biomass represents an abundant carbon-neutral renewable resource for the production of bioenergy and biomaterials, and its enhanced use would address several societal needs. Advances in genetics, biotechnology, process chemistry, and engineering are leading to a new manufacturing concept for converting renewable biomass to valuable fuels and products, generally referred to as the biorefinery. The integration of agroenergy crops and biorefinery manufacturing technologies offers the potential for the development of sustainable biopower and biomaterials that will lead to a new manufacturing paradigm.

Fourier transform IR spectroscopy has been used to investigate the interaction of carbon dioxide with polymers. IR transmission and attenuated total reflectance spectra were obtained for CO 2 impregnated into polymer films. It has been shown that the polymers possessing electron-donating functional groups (e.g., carbonyl groups) exhibit specific interactions with CO 2 , most probably of Lewis acid-base nature. An unusual aspect is the use of the bending mode (ν 2 ) of CO 2 to probe polymer-CO 2 interactions. The evidence of the interaction is the observation of the splitting of the band corresponding to the CO 2 ν 2 mode. This splitting indicates that the double degeneracy of the ν 2 mode is removed due to the interaction of electron lone pairs of the carbonyl oxygen with the carbon atom of the CO 2 molecule. This splitting has not been observed for polymers lacking electron-donating functional groups (e.g., poly(ethylene)). In contrast, the ν 3 mode shows little if any sensitivity to this interaction, which is in accordance with the interaction where CO 2 molecule acts as an electron acceptor. Finally, the chemical and engineering implications of this type of specific interaction of CO 2 with polymers are discussed; perhaps the changes in spectra

Many industrial applications that rely on emulsions would benefit from an efficient, rapid method of breaking these emulsions at a specific desired stage. We report that long-chain alkyl amidine compounds can be reversibly transformed into charged surfactants by exposure to an atmosphere of carbon dioxide, thereby stabilizing water/alkane emulsions or, for the purpose of microsuspension polymerization, styrene-in-water emulsions. Bubbling nitrogen, argon, or air through the amidinium bicarbonate solutions at 65 degrees C reverses the reaction, releasing carbon dioxide and breaking the emulsion. We also find that the neutral amidines function as switchable demulsifiers of an aqueous crude oil emulsion, enhancing their practical potential.