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Researchers at Rice University have been able to transform a greenhouse gas into a greener, liquid fuel.
Developed by the Chemical Engineering and Biomolecular Engineering Laboratory of Rice University Haotian Wang and a team of scientists, the catalytic reactor uses carbon dioxide as raw material and produces purified concentrations of formic acid. In the current state of things, formic acid produced in the traditional way is expensive and requires a lot of energy.
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Rice's work could lead to the use of conversion technologies
The system created by Rice researchers could help boost the commercial use of carbon dioxide conversion technologies.
"Formic acid is a vector of energy. It's a fuel cell fuel capable of generating electricity and emitting carbon dioxide – which you can recover and recycle again, "Wang said in a press release announcing research and a hydrogen storage material that can contain nearly 1,000 times the energy of an identical hydrogen volume, which is difficult to compress. is currently a daunting challenge for hydrogen fuel cell cars. "
The new system is the result of Wang's and Rice's Brown School of Engineering's team's desire to find useful technologies for transforming greenhouse gases into products. The team was able to achieve an energy conversion efficiency of about 42% with this test.
Researchers' own developments have made this possible
Chuan Xia, lead author of the study, published in Nature Energy, reported to have developed a two-dimensional bismuth catalyst and developed a solid-state electrolyte that eliminates the need for salt to achieve a reaction that transforms the greenhouse gas into a more environmentally friendly product. l & # 39; environment. Once the process was finalized, scientists worked with the Brookhaven National Laboratory to monitor the ongoing process.
"X-ray absorption spectroscopy, a powerful technique available on the Inner Shell Spectroscopy light line (ISS) of the Brookhaven Lab National Light Synchrotron Light Source II, allows us to probe the electronic structure of electrocatalysts in operation. , that is to say during the chemical process, "said co-author Eli Stavitski, scientific leader of the light line at ISS. "In this work, we tracked oxidation states of bismuth at different potentials and were able to identify the active state of the catalyst when reducing carbon dioxide."
Big impacts on the image
The laboratory was able to generate formic acid continuously for 100 hours with minimal degradation of the reactor components. Scientists see their work having a greater impact on the environment.
"Basically, the reduction of carbon dioxide is very important for its effect on global warming as well as for its green chemical synthesis," Wang said. "If electricity comes from renewable sources such as the sun or the wind, we can create a loop that turns carbon dioxide into an important substance without emitting more."
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