Andy Extance

Exeter

Freelance Journalist at Freelance

Bag of chemicals posing as a science journalist. @ABSW chair; director at @exempirical, @ECOEtalk; widower. Not here anymore - check me on Bluesky or LinkedIn.

Articles

How decarbonisation will help the UK’s last refineries survive

2 weeks ago | chemistryworld.com | Andy Extance

Carbon capture and low-carbon hydrogen are central to any possibility of supplying liquid fuels compatible with net zero, reports Andy Extance Decarbonisation as a survival strategy: UK refineries are under pressure from global competition, environmental regulations and declining fuel demand. Companies like Essar Energy Transition (EET) at Stanlow are investing in low-carbon technologies – especially hydrogen and carbon capture – to remain viable and avoid closure.
What are the prospects for making green hydrogen straight from seawater?

3 weeks ago | chemistryworld.com | Andy Extance

On the west bank of China’s Pearl River estuary, in Zhuhai, researchers are using renewable energy and seawater to shrink the petrochemical industry’s carbon footprint, via ‘green’ hydrogen. Scientists from Beijing University of Chemical Technology (BUCT) and the China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) are building a pilot plant to directly split seawater into oxygen and hydrogen. This is a massive scientific challenge because seawater can be corrosive and chemically complex.
A guide to navigating AI chemistry hype

1 month ago | cen.acs.org | Andy Extance

The world is awash with news about artificial intelligence tools, including those intended to help chemists. But are the tools useful, a threat, or even worth the attention? It's hard to know, especially when developers are making bold, exaggerated claims. Some of us have little background knowledge with which to critically assess this new technology.
Reprocess, reuse, repeat: greener recycling of perovskite solar cells cuts costs

Feb 20, 2025 | chemistryworld.com | Andy Extance

Researchers in Sweden and the US say that chemically recycling perovskite solar cells could cut their costs, making them more competitive with the leading technology – crystalline silicon modules. Feng Gao’s team at Linköping University, Sweden, has developed a technique to cheaply and repeatedly take apart solar cells made of perovskite materials and make new high-performance devices. The conditions they use are environmentally friendly, primarily water based.
My Climate Protest Arrest Shows the Problem with ‘Social Tipping Point’ Theory

Jan 23, 2025 | scientificamerican.com | Andy Extance

Eyeing the bruises on the knuckles of the police officer arresting me, I took a deep breath and explained why we need to act faster to avoid climate catastrophe. Standing on a traffic island in London, I looked straight into his body-worn video camera, and hoped the speech would make it to the courtroom.
Comprendre la Terre depuis l’espace : comment les satellites contribuent à la science

Jan 14, 2025 | courrierinternational.com | Andy Extance

Shawn Kefauver a vu de ses yeux vu des compagnies pétrolières faire des “trucs louches” en Équateur. Mais le seul témoignage retenu par la justice a été celui de l’analyse des données enregistrées depuis l’espace à laquelle il a contribué. Pas le sien. Avec ses collègues, ce chercheur de l’université de Barcelone a eu l’idée d’utiliser le spectre lumineux enregistré par les satellites pour suivre les changements de la forêt amazonienne à proximité des installations pétrolières équatoriennes.
The promise of drugs that send proteins to the shredder

Jan 13, 2025 | chemistryworld.com | Andy Extance

Andy Extance charts how research into revolutionary targeted protein degradation therapies is moving from serendipity to strategic discovery One of today’s hottest pharmaceutical research areas owes much to alphabetically ordered posters at the 1999 annual Burroughs Wellcome Fund (BWF) scholars’ retreat. Though they both had received a BWF Junior Faculty Award, Craig Crews and Ray Deshaies hadn’t discussed their work before.
Visible light-powered catalysts clean up ‘forever chemicals’

Nov 26, 2024 | chemistryworld.com | Andy Extance

Chemists in China and the US have discovered catalysts enabling light-driven reactions that can break down fluorine-containing chemicals that are attracting concern as pollutants. Two research groups separately harnessed a powerful new class of carbon-based catalysts that help break bonds between carbon and fluorine atoms, avoiding using and producing other harmful chemicals.
Clearing up the compostable plastic mess

Nov 11, 2024 | chemistryworld.com | Andy Extance

Rather than a potential triumph, the compostable plastics we use look increasingly like a tragedy. Andy Extance looks at the problems and seeks solutions When the BBC’s Blue Planet II aired in 2017, showing turtles trapped in plastic debris and puffins feeding plastic to their chicks, the material became public enemy number one. Half of British people said they’d pay more to avoid plastic waste according to a poll by survey company YouGov.
Proteins with multiple structures open up AlphaFold’s black box

Sep 30, 2024 | chemistryworld.com | Andy Extance

Biochemists in the US have found limits to what AlphaFold, the usually highly accurate protein structure prediction artificial intelligence system developed by Google DeepMind, can do. Lauren Porter’s team at the US National Library of Medicine at the National Institutes of Health looked at how AlphaFold performed with proteins that adopted more than one stable structure.