University of Delaware Develops Catalyst To Convert CO2 Into Useful Chemicals

In a new breakthrough research work, University of Delaware scientists have been successful in converting CO2, a green house gas into carbon monoxide, which can be further converted into an useful chemical. The greenhouse gases absorb and emit radiation within the thermal infrared range. Now converting such a gas into an useful chemical has been a subject of great challenge for sustainable and green energy researchers. Therefore, the team takes pride in developing a new catalyst that can electrochemically convert carbon dioxide to carbon monoxide with 92% efficiency. The lead researcher in the project - Mr. Feng Jiao who is an assistant professor at the University in the chemical and biomolecular engineering department has got Qi Lu, a postdoctoral fellow, and Jonathan Rosen, a graduate student as his co-authors on this research work's paper.


From their reports, it has came to light that using nano-porous silver electrocatalyst instead of the commonly used polycrystalline silver - did the trick for them. Use of silver was clearly a better choice because of its high selectivity property, inorganic nature and cheaper cost than most other precious metal catalysts. The final product i.e. carbon monoxide can be used to create synthetic fuels, thereby reducing the emissions of industrial carbon dioxide emissions by almost 40%. In testing their catalyst, the researchers compared it with some other carbon dioxide electrocatalysts including polycrystalline silver and other silver nanostructures such as nanoparticles and nanowires. The results showed that the new silver catalyst has great advantages over others in water environments.


Over the last two decades, reduction in electrocatalytic carbon dioxide's presence has gained traction for using electricity from renewable energy sources. This is such a great step in the direction of green energy use and if we put this technology to use in major industrial units such as power plants, refineries and petrochemical plants to convert CO2 emissions to usable chemicals, it is going to impact the society in a very positive way. The current techniques to convert carbon dioxide to carbon monoxide are difficult to implement and the team is hoping that their catalyst will make it easy to make future advances in this area.

What do you think about the ideas and innovation that converts the harmful into the useful? Share with us in comments below.

Update - The entire research work done by Delaware University team for this project has been funded by the American Chemical Society Petroleum Research Fund and University of Delaware Research Foundation.

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