Harvard University researchers have devised a catalyst that uses renewable electricity to electrochemically transform carbon dioxide into carbon monoxide (CO). CO is a key commodity used in a large number of industrial processes.

For Haotian Wang, it’s the perfect raw material. Wang, a Fellow at the Rowland Institute at Harvard, and his research team have developed a system that uses renewable electricity supplies, with energy conversion efficiency from sunlight to CO that can be as high as 12.7 %, more than one order of magnitude higher than natural photosynthesis.

The Harvard team’s device is described in an recent paper published in Chem.

Wang explained, “Basically, what this is is a form of artificial photosynthesis. In a plant, sunlight, CO2 and water become sugar and oxygen. In our system, the input is sunlight, CO2 and water, and we produce CO and oxygen.”

That reaction takes place in an unassuming-looking device, barely the size of a smartphone, that includes two electrolyte-filled chambers separated by an ion exchange membrane.

On one site, an electrode powered by renewable energy oxidizes water molecules into oxygen gas and frees protons. These protons move to the other chamber where – with the help of a carefully designed metal single atom catalyst – they bind to carbon dioxide molecules, creating water and carbon monoxide.

Wang continued, “The challenge is that most catalysts that are known tend to produce hydrogen gas. So it’s difficult, when you split water, to prevent those protons from combining together to form hydrogen gas. What we needed was a catalyst that can prevent hydrogen evolution and instead can efficiently inject those protons into CO2, therefore achieving a high selectivity for CO2 reduction.”

Unfortunately, the two best-known such catalysts are gold and silver, precious metals that are very costly to make the reaction cost effective on a large scale.

Kun Jiang said, who is a postdoctoral fellow in Wang group and the first author of this work takes up the description, “So we began by looking at low-cost materials like nickel, iron and cobalt, which are all Earth-abundant. But the problem is that they are all very good hydrogen catalysts, so they want to produce hydrogen gas.

In addition, they can all very easily be poisoned by carbon monoxide,” he added. “Even if you manage to use them to reduce CO2, the resulting CO bonds very strongly to the surface, preventing any further reactions from taking place.”

To solve those problems, Wang and his Stanford collaborators, Prof. Yi Cui and Prof. Jens Nørskov, set about working to “tune” the electronic properties of the metals. Dr. Samira Siahrostami, a staff scientist from Prof. Nørskov group rationalized the nature of active sites by atomic scale modeling and discovered that dispersing nickel metals into isolated single atoms, which are trapped in graphene vacancies, produced a material that was eager to react with carbon dioxide and willing to release the resulting carbon monoxide.

That carbon monoxide, Wang said, can then be used in a host of industrial processes.

“Carbon monoxide is a very important industry product,” Wang said. “It can be used in plastics production, to make hydrocarbon products or can be burned as a fuel itself. It’s widely used in industry.”

Ultimately, though, the hope is that the system could one day be scaled up enough to scrub carbon dioxide from the atmosphere in an effort to combat global climate change.

“The basic idea was if we can capture existing CO2 and use renewable electricity, from solar or wind power, to reduce it into useful chemicals,” Wang said, “then we can possibly form a carbon loop.”

This looks like an important addition to the CO2 question. While the global warming crowd isn’t keeping up with the dissolution of their theory, CO2 has value and catching and recycling it is a worthwhile enterprise particularly in products and over time in getting humans is tune with the planet’s carbon cycle.


Comments

9 Comments so far

  1. Jenny on December 8, 2017 12:57 AM

    While the global warming crowd isn’t keeping up with the dissolution of their theory, CO2 has value and catching and recycling it is a worthwhile enterprise particularly in products and over time in getting humans is tune with the planet’s carbon cycle.

  2. Jack on December 8, 2017 2:34 AM

    The basic idea was if we can capture existing CO2 and use renewable electricity, from solar or wind power, to reduce it into useful chemicals

  3. Jane on December 8, 2017 2:35 AM

    Carbon monoxide is a very important industry product

  4. Jagdish on December 9, 2017 11:26 PM

    CO conversion may or may not develop into any useful result but two directions of CO2 may yield useful results.
    1. Growing GHG compatible varieties of crops for efficient use of carbon in air for food or fuel.
    2. Thermochemical conversion of biomass to fuels and useful chemicals. High temperature nuclear steam could be used for initial conversion of biomass to syngas.

  5. Jack on December 10, 2017 6:43 PM

    An excellent demo using solar energy to selectively fix CO2 into CO at mild reaction condition, for both the practical signification in chemical industry and the fundamental science of boosting single atom catalysis.

  6. Francis M. Kuhns on December 11, 2017 2:10 AM

    The basic idea was if we can capture existing CO2 and use renewable electricity, from solar or wind power, to reduce it into useful chemicals

  7. Marlene C. Mathis on December 12, 2017 2:30 AM

    Carbon monoxide is a very important industry product,

  8. Coleen B. Johnson on December 12, 2017 2:32 AM

    Ultimately, though, the hope is that the system could one day be scaled up enough to scrub carbon dioxide from the atmosphere in an effort to combat global climate change.

  9. Isabella Ferreira Barbosa on December 12, 2017 3:11 AM

    Even if you manage to use them to reduce CO2, the resulting CO bonds very strongly to the surface, preventing any further reactions from taking place

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