A Liquid Catalyst That Converts Carbon Emissions Into Fuel

A research team from Illinois, USA has succeeded in overcoming one of the major problems being faced today – Carbon Emission. They proposed a new technology that helps in reducing the carbon dioxide level and produces fuel from it. Research team led by Prof. Paul Kenis from university of Illinois along with a startup company called Dioxde materials produced a catalyst that improves artificial photosynthesis. Results of this joint venture were reported in the scientific journal Science.

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Artificial photosynthesis is the process of converting the CO₂ gas into carbon based chemicals mostly to fuel and other petroleum compounds. This process is very much near to artificial photosynthesis. In the natural one plant uses solar energy and converts CO₂ and water into sugar and other hydrocarbons. While the artificial process with the help of electrochemical cells uses solar or wind energy to convert carbon dioxide to simple fuels such as formic acid or methanol which in further refinement produces ethanol and other fuels. This is seen as an alternative to biomass fuel which uses crops such as corn for the production of fuel.

"The key advantage is that there is no competition with the food supply," said Masel, a co-principal investigator of the paper and CEO of Dioxide Materials, "and it is a lot cheaper to transmit electricity than it is to ship biomass to a refinery."

But the one big problem that this process faces is the energy issue. The initial step of converting carbon dioxide to carbon monoxide consumes too much energy. The requirement is so intense that the amount of energy required is much more that what we actually get from the fuel.  However the ionic catalyst developed by the team greatly reduces the problem. The ionic liquids stabilize the intermediates in the reaction so that less electricity is needed to complete the conversion. The experimental setup used here is also not an easy one. The researchers used an electrochemical cell as a flow reactor, separating the gaseous CO₂ input and oxygen output from the liquid electrolyte catalyst with gas-diffusion electrodes. The cell design allowed the researchers to fine-tune the composition of the electrolyte stream to improve reaction kinetics, including adding ionic liquids as a co-catalyst.

The use of new catalyst worked out tremendously. The over potential required for carbon dioxide was reduced resulting in less power consumption. The team is now trying to commercialize this process. But before that they are focusing to improve the conversion rate to maximize the output. This new tech stuff promises to very effective in coming days as it can reduce our dependence on fossil fuel and can possibility help in cleaning the atmosphere.

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