Question: You said the best sciency thing you've done is change carbon monoxide into alcohols but how would you go about doing that?

Sarwat Iqbal answered on 6 Mar 2015:

This is an interesting question. I will try to explain the process in simple words.
I have worked on a specific process called ‘Fischer Topsch synthesis’. What happens in this process is that, a mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen (syngas) is passed over an active catalyst material. Carbon monoxide and hydrogen get absorbed on catalyst surface and the catalyst helps in breaking the bonds and forming some new bond structures. Depending on the active sites available on catalyst surfae specific bonds are formed. This process of selection and preparation of catalyst is very important because small amount of impurities can lead to methane formation which is not a required product.
I helped in synthesizing specific active sites on catalyst surface which helped in getting a selective interaction between hydrogen and carbon monoxide and we could get methanol and ethanol as products.