The research team of the University of Illinois at the United States stated on October 21, 2011 that it has succeeded in overcoming a major obstacle to a promising technology that can simultaneously reduce carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and produce fuel.
Paul Kenis, a professor of chemistry and bioengineering at the University of Illinois, and his research team worked with a new company, Dioxide Materials, to conduct this study to produce artificially photocatalyzed catalysts.
The team's research results have been published in the "Science" magazine.
Artificial light synthesis is the process of converting carbon dioxide gas into useful carbon-based chemicals, large numbers of useful fuels, or other compounds, which are usually produced from petroleum, and this process can be used as an alternative to extracting them from biomass.
In plants, photosynthesis uses solar energy to convert carbon dioxide (CO2) and water into sugars and other hydrocarbons. Biofuels are refined from sugars extracted from crops such as grains.
However, in artificial light synthesis, electrochemical cells can use electricity from solar collectors or wind turbines to convert CO2 into simple carbonaceous fuels, such as formic acid or methanol, which can be further refined to make ethanol. And other fuels.
Its main advantage is that it does not compete with people for grain, and it is much cheaper to carry out electricity transmission than to send biomass to a refinery.
However, one big obstacle is how to maintain artificial light synthesis: The first step in making fuel is to convert carbon dioxide into carbon monoxide, which is an energy-intensive process. Too much power is needed to drive this first reaction. More energy is needed to produce fuel, which is more than the energy stored in the fuel.
The research team at the University of Illinois uses a new method that involves the use of an ionic liquid to catalyze the reaction, greatly reducing the energy required to drive the process. The ionic liquid stabilizes the intermediates in the reaction, so much less power is required to complete this conversion.
Using electrochemical cells as flow reactors, the researchers used gas diffusion electrodes to separate the supplied CO2 gas and oxygen from the output of the liquid electrolyte catalyst.
The battery design allows the researcher to fine-tune the composition of the electrolyte stream to increase the reaction kinetics, including the addition of an ionic liquid as a cocatalyst.
This allegedly reduced the overpotential for the reduction of CO2.
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