From the University of Illinois – Ionic liquid catalyst helps turn emissions into fuel
University of Illinois chemical and biological engineering professor Paul Kenis and his research group joined forces with researchers at Dioxide Materials, a startup company, to produce a catalyst that improves artificial photosynthesis. The company, in the university Research Park, was founded by retired chemical engineering professor Richard Masel. The team reported their results in the journal Science.
Artificial photosynthesis is the process of converting carbon dioxide gas into useful carbon-based chemicals, most notably fuel or other compounds usually derived from petroleum, as an alternative to extracting them from biomass.
In plants, photosynthesis uses solar energy to convert carbon dioxide (CO2) and water to sugars and other hydrocarbons. Biofuels are refined from sugars extracted from crops such as corn. However, in artificial photosynthesis, an electrochemical cell uses energy from a solar collector or a wind turbine to convert CO2 to simple carbon fuels such as formic acid or methanol, which are further refined to make ethanol and other fuels.
“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.”
However, one big hurdle has kept artificial photosynthesis from vaulting into the mainstream: The first step to making fuel, turning carbon dioxide into carbon monoxide, is too energy intensive. It requires so much electricity to drive this first reaction that more energy is used to produce the fuel than can be stored in the fuel.
The Illinois group used a novel approach involving an ionic liquid to catalyze the reaction, greatly reducing the energy required to drive the process. The ionic liquids stabilize the intermediates in the reaction so that less electricity is needed to complete the conversion.
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.
“It lowers the overpotential for CO2 reduction tremendously,” said Kenis, who is also a professor of mechanical science and engineering and affiliated with the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology. “Therefore, a much lower potential has to be applied. Applying a much lower potential corresponds to consuming less energy to drive the process.”
Next, the researchers hope to tackle the problem of throughput. To make their technology useful for commercial applications, they need to speed up the reaction and maximize conversion.
“More work is needed, but this research brings us a significant step closer to reducing our dependence on fossil fuels while simultaneously reducing CO2 emissions that are linked to unwanted climate change,” Kenis said.
Graduate students Brian Rosen, Michael Thorson, Wei Zhu and Devin Whipple and postdoctoral researcher Amin Salehi-Khojin were co-authors of the paper. The U.S. Department of Energy supported this work.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Jules Verne in Around The Moon had the spaceship’s internal CO2 removed by open tanks of potash. Is that feasible for real?
OK, they have invented a low efficency battery that in the end produces a surplus of CO2. Since there will NEVER be a break even point (Energy in vs out) because otherwize they could use the fuel to generate the electricity. The whole scheme becomes a really inneficient solar cell. If the process could be improved, it might work as a high capacity battery generating fuel while the wind is blowing and the sun shines to be burned when they aren’t at a lower efficiency rate of course.
This sounds like a sucker fishing expedition.
Really? The dept of energy actually supported something that has a positive potential?
Uh oh. The current administration supporting anything nowadays seems to be a death knell.
It might make sense if you used cheap hydro electricity, but never with wind or solar. They used to make ammonia using hydro at Trail, BC.
Synthesis gas is usually make from coal or gas, but from wood is possible and carbon neutral.
My bull detector was going off BEFORE I found out that I was paying for this via my tax dollars. Now that I know the DOE was involved all we have to do is find the connected democrat, union, or liberal education institution that is skimming. Oh, looky! The University of Illinois. What a coincidence.
FundingFishingAlert. Insert [feel_good_CAGW_mitigation_scheme] here.
I think natural photosynthesis is remarkable and free and effective.
To make hydrocarbons synthetically from CO2 isn’t necessary.
While they’re working on this, in the mean time, Ionic Liquids would make a good name for a rock band.
How much energy does it take to produce the catalysts?
“More work is needed, but this research brings us a significant step closer to reducing our dependence on fossil fuels while simultaneously reducing CO2 emissions that are linked to unwanted climate change,” Kenis said.
If only all the bright contributors to WUWT would (as I thought they claimed they could) convincingly demonstrate that CO2 emissions are only in the very slightest linked to climate change, wanted or unwanted, we’d probably hear no more such remarks (nor of footprints, windmills or any of the other paraphernalia streaming from the AGW crew).
“while simultaneously reducing CO2 emissions that are linked to unwanted climate change,” Kenis said
===========================================
This is getting more stupid every day……
snake oil …
Liquid or gas carbon based fuel can be used in regular cars. Charging batteries on route or even changing batteries on a longish car trip is a pain. Batteries for long haul trucks is a complete non starter. Plus we have pipline, garages, and a lot of investment in carbon.
Ian Forman 11.47am said “If only all the bright contributors to WUWT would (as I thought they claimed they could) convincingly demonstrate that CO2 emissions are only in the very slightest linked to climate change, wanted or unwanted, we’d probably hear no more such remarks (nor of footprints, windmills or any of the other paraphernalia streaming from the AGW crew)”.
And if only Hansen, Mann et al could convincingly demonstrate that CO2 emissions are very much linked to climate change………!!!
I’d like to know the efficiency they achieve. If we could produce synthetic fuel with an efficiency of, say, 85%, we would be on par with most battery or pumped hydro storage solutions, and that would be very interesting indeed. Hydrocarbons are the best storage solution we have – high density, easy handling; much easier than H2.
And supporting such research with tax payer money is MUCH more meaningful than doling it out Solyndra-style for mass production of technologies that we know beforehand to be inefficient.
Re: Ian Forman
““If only all the bright contributors to WUWT would (as I thought they claimed they could) convincingly demonstrate that CO2 emissions are only in the very slightest linked to climate change….”
No. It is up to those who are claiming CO2 is a major driver of climate change to prove their theory. At the present moment they are unable to even demonstrate that current temperature levels are outside of the normal range of variability.
How can they publish their work in the scientific literature and expect to have a viable patent protection. They make their findings public!!!
On the technical side, ionic liquids are very interesting chemical systems but they are usually very expensive and impurities from the process at hand reduce the efficiency. In any case, it needs to be changed regularly. However, the idea to use ionic liquid to reduce the activation potential in an electrolytic cell is a very novel approach.
On a practical side, plants at least have a certain facility to reproduce themselves and every time you end up with new “photoelectric” cells that cost next to nothing and they fix carbon extremely more efficiently. The cost and throughput of a pyrolysis system will always be much cheaper that their system.
Question: Suppose this scheme really did work, and energy could be economically harnessed by removing atmospheric CO2. What would a lower limit be? i.e. Would some global consensus for CO2 levels be agreed to below which we would stop using this process to get energy? It might start getting a wee bit cold if levels dropped much below 200-250 ppm.
Scott Covert: OK, they have invented a low efficency battery that in the end produces a surplus of CO2.
They have invented another way to store the energy generated by solar and wind and hydro in places and at times when the energy is a surplus over consumption. The usefulness depends on success in upscaling the process, increasing total throughput, and reducing the price. Those have been done with other catalyst-intensive processes. Shipping fuel from sunny Nevada and California, or making fuel from wind at night, is not intrinsically less sensible than importing oil from the Middle East and Venezuela and refining it at night.
Two factors need to be considered. Storage of energy requires converting one form, say thermal, into another, say hydrocarbon, so that it may be used only when and where it is needed. Try cooking a hotdog on last week’s (thermal) campfire.
Plant matter was converted to coal and methane over millions of years with the actual energy input arguably thousands of times more than we actually get out of it. Not very efficient.
Fortunately Andrea Rossi’s October 6 E-Cat test was a major success, and energy efficiency will never need concern us again.
Q.E.D.
Biggest barriers:
1) The easiest fuel to synthesize is methane, which is essentially free these days due to fracking.
2) This process will never be solar or wind powered. The equipment is expensive. Nobody is going to buy big expensive gas synthesis infrastructure and then only run it 30% of the time. It’d be great if it were nuke powered.
3) Atmospheric CO2 concentrations are too low. Concentrating it to a point where you can put it into the reaction chamber with reasonable efficiency wastes a lot of energy. Using a coal plant waste stream gives a better CO2 concentration, but tiny amounts of SOx and NOx has a way of ruining reaction surfaces.
Add this one to the list of professors and former professors who set up an outside business with ties to the university….the relationship allows them to use state or federally funded lab facilities and inexpensive grad student labor for profits their company enjoys the lion’s share of.
It’s simple thermodynamics here. The energy stored will always be less than the energy invested. However, with solar input, it is not all that important that the process be very efficient as it is so abundant. Using wind power, however, it’s a pig in a poke as wind turbines are a lose-lose from start to finish, such that the energy output is a loss over the life of the turbine.
seems like the various Fischer-Tropsch-based processes make more sense. Use high output C4 plants to produce biomass anywhere and everywhere. Use biomass liquefaction to turn it into various liquid fuels.
The only justification for the UIL process is to make use of intermittent solar and wind power- build highly uneconomic windmills and solar panel installations. Use any extra electricity generated to produce fuels from captured C02 from regular power plants. It certainly can’t function competitively trying to separate 350ppm of CO2 from the atmosphere.
The only justification for the