Technologies for the global energy transition

The availability of reliable, affordable and mature technologies is at the basis of an effective decarbonization strategy, that should be in turn supported by timely and accurate policies. Due to the large differences across sectors and countries, there is no silver bullet to support decarbonization, but a combination of multiple technologies will be required to reach the challenging goal of decarbonizing the energy sector. This chapter presents a focus on the current technological solutions that are available in four main sectors: power generation, industry, transport and buildings. The aim of this work is to highlight the main strengths and weaknesses of the current technologies, to help the reader in understanding which are the main opportunities and challenges related to the development and deployment of each of them, as well as their potential contribution to the decarbonization targets. The chapter also provides strategies and policy recommendations from a technology point of view on how to decarbonize the global energy systems by mid-century and of the necessity to take a systems approach

Online electro-Fenton-mass spectrometry reveals 2,4′,5-trichlorobiphenyl oxidation products and binding to organic matter

Electrochemistry–mass spectrometry is used to simulate redox reactions in many research disciplines because this technique is fast and provides information on compound metabolites. However, the analysis of the degradation of refractory organic pollutants by reactive oxygen species is difficult to achieve by the electrochemistry step. Therefore, here we use online electro-Fenton-mass spectrometry to study for the first time the oxidation of 2,4′,5-trichlorobiphenyl [polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) 31] by reactive oxygen species and the binding reactions of PCB degradation products with model substances of natural organic matter. The degradation products were identified by coupled Q Trap mass spectrometry. We observed a binding of a degradation product with γ-l-glutamyl-l-cysteinyl-glycine. We propose a transformation pathway. We conclude that online electro-Fenton-mass spectrometry is a promising technique to study the oxidation of refractory organic pollutants and further binding of degradation products with natural organic matter