![]() (Image credit: Mark Golden)Īlthough plants reduce CO 2 to carbon-rich sugars naturally, an artificial electrochemical route to CO has yet to be widely commercialized. Additionally, the barriers to electrifying airplanes and ships – long-distance travel and the high weight of batteries – would not be problems for energy-dense, carbon-neutral fuels.įrom left: Christopher Graves, Michal Bajdich and Michael Machala in front of the pulsed laser deposition machine that Machala used to fabricate the electrodes. One advantage sustainable liquid fuels could have over the electrification of transportation is that they could use the existing gasoline and diesel infrastructure, like engines, pipelines and gas stations. “We achieved something we couldn’t have separately – both fundamental understanding and practical demonstration of a more robust material.” Barriers to conversion “We had been working on high-temperature CO 2 electrolysis for years, but the collaboration with Stanford was the key to this breakthrough,” said Skafte, lead author of the study, who is now a postdoctoral researcher at DTU. “We showed we can use electricity to reduce CO 2 into CO with 100 percent selectivity and without producing the undesired byproduct of solid carbon,” said William Chueh, an associate professor of materials science and engineering at Stanford, one of three senior authors of the paper.Ĭhueh, aware of DTU’s research in this area, invited Christopher Graves, associate professor in DTU’s Energy Conversion & Storage Department, and Theis Skafte, a DTU doctoral candidate at the time, to come to Stanford and work on the technology together. The team envisions using renewable power to make the CO and for subsequent conversions, which would result in carbon-neutral products. The addition of hydrogen to CO can produce fuels like synthetic diesel and the equivalent of jet fuel. ![]() Stripping oxygen from CO 2 to make CO gas is the first step in turning CO 2 into nearly any liquid fuel and other products, like synthetic gas and plastics. The catalyst – cerium oxide – is much more resistant to breaking down. In a new study published today in Nature Energy, researchers from Stanford University and the Technical University of Denmark (DTU) show how electricity and an Earth-abundant catalyst can convert CO 2 into energy-rich carbon monoxide (CO) better than conventional methods. (Image credit: Cube3D)Ĭarbon-neutral re-use of CO 2 has emerged as an alternative to burying the greenhouse gas underground. Artistic representation of a nickel-based electrode as a broken down fuel pump and of a cerium-based electrode as a new, productive pump. ![]()
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