Carbon dioxide is one of the most easily produced wastes on earth. The breathing activities of animals and plants, as well as various burning phenomena, will produce carbon dioxide. Since the industrial revolution, various combustion phenomena applied by human beings in industrial production have greatly increased, which also makes the proportion of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere rise rapidly. Some experts believe that at present, the concentration of carbon dioxide is increasing fastest in the life history of the earth, and the rapid increase of carbon dioxide content is the initiator of global warming that scientists are worried about at present.

So is there any way to convert carbon dioxide into other useful substances and make it serve humans or animals and plants? Of course there is! Carbon dioxide itself is a compound, and its essence can be changed by decomposing this compound or reacting with other substances. In fact, plants in nature have been trying to convert carbon dioxide. Photosynthesis of plants is to convert carbon dioxide in the air into oxygen and absorb compounds such as glucose from carbon as part of themselves. The oxygen produced by this biological phenomenon is also considered as the main source of oxygen in the earth's atmosphere.

So can we humans artificially convert carbon dioxide into other substances? Of course, it is also possible. Although the chemical properties of carbon dioxide are relatively stable, there are still many substances that can react with carbon dioxide to generate other substances under certain conditions. It's just that most of them are time-consuming, laborious and expensive, and too much input and too little output income.

In May last year, the international academic journal Nature Nanotechnology published a cover article, introducing the research achievements of scientists in China in transforming carbon dioxide. The new catalyst they made can efficiently convert carbon dioxide into clean liquid fuel-methanol, which once caused a sensation in the industry.

In July this year, the World Wide Web published an article saying that scientists in China prepared "artificial leaves" to turn carbon dioxide into treasure. The artificial leaves mentioned here are actually another new type of catalyst. This research is led by Professor Gong Jinlong from the School of Chemical Engineering of Tianjin University. Through in-depth research on the chemical catalytic conversion process of carbon dioxide, his team broke through the bottleneck problems of high energy consumption, low efficiency and low added value of products faced by carbon dioxide resource utilization, laying a scientific foundation for the large-scale promotion of carbon dioxide conversion and utilization technology, and the research results are at the world's leading level.

The difficulty of carbon dioxide conversion is that its molecular structure is very stable and it needs high energy to convert. Therefore, it is not easy to industrially convert carbon dioxide. Except for the needs of industrial and agricultural production, it is impossible to reduce the carbon dioxide content in the atmosphere by this method. At present, what we can use is the photosynthesis of plants to reduce the content of carbon dioxide, so we should take good care of plants and engage in more greening activities to make the earth full of green mountains and green waters. In industrial and agricultural production, only by reducing the emission of carbon dioxide as much as possible can we reduce or contain the continuous increase of carbon dioxide concentration as much as possible and slow down or prevent the climate development trend of global warming.