UD catalyst can convert CO2 to CO with 92 percent efficiency
A team of researchers at the University of Delaware has developed a highly selective catalyst capable of electrochemically converting carbon dioxide — a greenhouse gas — to carbon monoxide with 92 percent efficiency. The carbon monoxide then can be used to develop useful chemicals.
The researchers recently reported their findings in Nature Communications.
“Converting carbon dioxide to useful chemicals in a selective and efficient way remains a major challenge in renewable and sustainable energy research,” according to Feng Jiao, assistant professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering and the project’s lead researcher.
Co-authors on the paper include Qi Lu, a postdoctoral fellow, and Jonathan Rosen, a graduate student, working with Jiao.
The researchers found that when they used a nano-porous silver electrocatalyst, it was 3,000 times more active than polycrystalline silver, a catalyst commonly used in converting carbon dioxide to useful chemicals.
Silver is considered a promising material for a carbon dioxide reduction catalyst because of it offers high selectivity — approximately 81 percent — and because it costs much less than other precious metal catalysts. Additionally, because it is inorganic, silver remains more stable under harsh catalytic environments.
The exceptionally high activity, Jiao said, is likely due to the UD-developed electrocatalyst’s extremely large and highly curved internal surface, which is approximately 150 times larger and 20 times intrinsically more active than polycrystalline silver.
Jiao explained that the active sites on the curved internal surface required a much smaller than expected voltage to overcome the activation energy barrier needed drive the reaction.
The resulting carbon monoxide, he continued, can be used as an industry feedstock for producing synthetic fuels, while reducing industrial carbon dioxide emissions by as much as 40 percent.
To validate whether their findings were unique, the researchers compared the UD-developed nano-porous silver catalyst with other potential carbon dioxide electrocatalysts including polycrystalline silver and other silver nanostructures such as nanoparticles and nanowires.
Testing under identical conditions confirmed the non-porous silver catalyst’s significant advantages over other silver catalysts in water environments.
Reducing greenhouse carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel use is considered critical for human society. Over the last 20 years, electrocatalytic carbon dioxide reduction has attracted attention because of the ability to use electricity from renewable energy sources such as wind, solar and wave.
Ideally, Jiao said, one would like to convert carbon dioxide produced in power plants, refineries and petrochemical plants to fuels or other chemicals through renewable energy use.
A 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report stated that 19 percent of greenhouse gas emissions resulted from industry in 2004, according to the Environmental Protection Agency’s website.
“Selective conversion of carbon dioxide to carbon monoxide is a promising route for clean energy but it is a technically difficult process to accomplish,” said Jiao. “We’re hopeful that the catalyst we’ve developed can pave the way toward future advances in this area.”
The research team’s work is supported through funding from the American Chemical Society Petroleum Research Fund and University of Delaware Research Foundation. Jiao has patented the novel application technique in collaboration with UD’s Office of Economic Innovation and Partnerships.
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This has potential for using electricity during off peak demand and recovering CO2 from coal and natural gas fired power plants. In this age, I find the idea quite sane.
TRG says: @ur momisugly January 31, 2014 at 12:36 pm
Of course, we can already produce hydrogen electrolytically
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Hydrogen explodes CO does not. It just kills you quietly. :>)
Gail Combs says:
January 31, 2014 at 11:53 am
With nuclear as the power source, “The resulting carbon monoxide, he continued, can be used as an industry feedstock for producing synthetic fuels”
So much for Peak Oil. So with Thorium reactors and this chemistry, problem solved. :>)
Someone ring up Obama and then we can all go home.
Gail,
Someone wring up Obama (sarchasm intended) and tell him We have +200 years supply of coal within the contiguous United States that yields prodigious amounts of thermal energy with little more than a single match needed to start the reaction. The reaction also produces CO2 gas, the direct and essential food source for all flora on this CO2-starved Planet Earth. In exquisite symbiosis, the plant based conversion of CO2 to plant matter plus O2 then directly and indirectly feeds all fauna on Spaceship Gaia while providing the oxygen critical for animal respiration and life. Completing the cycle of earthly life, every exhaled breath from planetary fauna yields more CO2 for the plants, while the animals waste products and decomposing bodies return essential nutrients to the flora. Coal Combustion: It’s a beautiful, ‘green’ part of the Cycle of Life!
Then he can go back to the golf course for the next 3 years, where he his ignorance and ideology can little hurt the planet and its denizens anew.
Mac
PS: And somebody tell him to replace his damn divots…..
R. Shearer says: @ur momisugly January 31, 2014 at 12:36 pm
….. In this age, I find the idea quite sane.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
If you want sane go thorium nuclear. That is what China is doing.
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/Current-and-Future-Generation/Thorium/
I agree with those suggesting it is a potential way to store excess energy. That will, of course, lead to zero ‘carbon’ sequestration. That will not please the CAGW faithful.
Seems a variation on this Israeli process which uses waste heat –
Claimed new CO2 disassociation process presumably exothermic
The announcement on 14 Jan is the one –
http://www.asx.com.au/asx/research/companyInfo.do?by=asxCode&asxCode=GER
Market capitalization for GER AU$13mill,
Boy, then we could use the CO to make more the useful H2, using the water gas shift reaction … plus more CO2 of course.
Gail Combs says:
January 31, 2014 at 11:53 am
“Someone ring up Obama and then we can all go home.”
You hadn’t missed an “st” off that, had you? ;>)
There, fixed.
Heat of combustion for carbon monoxide is 10.112 MJ/kg while it is 32.808 MJ/kg for carbon. However, for 1 kg carbon content, that is, for 2.333 kg carbon monoxide it is 23.595 MJ. Which means, if the 92% efficiency of the new catalyst is taken into account, one needs some 78% of the energy content in carbon (coal) to convert flue gas electrochemically back to raw material for useful chemicals. Efficiency of power plants is lower than that, therefore one would use up all the coal and still need electricity from the outside. Power output of such a plant is strictly negative.
On the other hand sane people have figured out a long time ago how to burn coal on low oxygen directly to carbon monoxide, with positive energy output, some of which can be used to generate additional electricity.
That’s how smart these guys are.
A catalyst to convert CO2 would be great. I mean zero CO2 based emmission taxes on my Jeep
The end of Carbon taxes on everything… oh just a mo… that would mean billions less cash in UK & EU coffers ….
Disputin says: @ur momisugly January 31, 2014 at 1:33 pm ….
ROTFLMAO Unfortunately they would find another puppet.
I wonder which one they will pick for us next?
The idea of a bunch of loose cannons geo-engineering the world in some new image scares me silly.
We are still working on finding out how this world works.
Swapping a plant fertilizing gas for a deadly one sounds like a poor deal to me. The fact that it is costly, difficult and pointless suggests that it should be ignored.
They made Cyclon-B with about the same efficiency and they weren’t seeking profit motive for that either. Wankers!
Oh the stupid…
Looks like everyone got there before me. CO2->CO is just a silly thing to do, and burns more fuel than it creates. How much more? Well look up Faraday’s constant and then factor in the various (in)efficiencies.
Even more stupid than carbon capture & storage – but useful for a “now scientists have discovered…” fund seeking press release.
I seem to recall it was the electro-chemists who brought us “cold fusion” (not).
I await news reports that everyone in the building is dead due to carbon monoxide poisoning. “Someone left the conversion machinery on overnight and gassed everyone.”
All this money being spent to find expensive ways to do something that plants do anyway. There is a photo of a trial plant taking power plant stack gas into glass tanks to grow green algae for STOCK FODDER in Queensland. The background to the photo is extensive lush green grass pastures. I suppose this nonsense won’t stop until nations have to legislate to outlaw these processes to preserve enough CO2 for the environment!
Pat Frank and a few other have it exactly right. If CO2 is not going to cause CAGW then using it for anything related to energy is a total waste of money. … use it for plant food where sunlight converts it back into an energy source absolutely free of charge. CO2 is nothing but a “dead battery” when it come to energy. It takes more energy to convert it back into an energy supplying form than you will ever get out when you reburn it. If you improve the process you might lose less money than you would with the unimproved process but you will ALWAYS lose.
Also, since the rate of photosynthesis increases with CO2 concentration, that means the increased photosynthesis rate is helping to cool the planet as a higher fraction of sunlight (energy) reaching the earths surface is being stored in C-H bonds rather ending up as waste heat. So what is not to like about increased CO2 if no CAGW?
As it has been said (by an 8 year old), “TheyPAY adults for this???”
The usefulness of such research depends on being able to scale up the process by a large factor while reducing the price. I do not see this process making competitively priced fuel any time soon, but I am glad that the research is progressing.
Oh my god! We take a harmless, odorless, trace gas which is necessary for life itself; call it an evil pollutant so that we can change it into a harmful, odorless, trace gas that is deadly to life itself.
Another example of humanity’s two steps forward, one step back approach to life.
I think we’re making a mistake reacting to the fact that carbon monoxide is poisonous. Many chemicals that are of great utility to humans are poisonous if ingested, but we have other uses for them.
In this case, the issues are not “is the result poisonous?” but “is it practical in the environment of a stack scrubber or similar situation?”
It’s a catalyst, apparently, with a small input voltage needed to pull off the trick. In other words, the normal energy calculations of combustion and conversion don’t apply. There are similar mechanisms now, using silver arranged in a crystalline structure. The arrangement in the paper has a tremendously larger surface area, and this seems to be the major trick. The shape of that surface area makes the rate of conversion high, it seems.
This all sounds good. But how delicate is it? And how fast? We don’t know — but the hint is that “we’re not there yet” since they hope their work “paves the way” for further advances. This is a reasonable if optimistic statement.
We should be leery of simply saying “carbon monoxide = bad!” It makes us sound rather like the catastrophists.
===|==============/ Keith DeHavelle
A few hundred square miles of green houses around the coal plants, using the waste heat and the CO2 would benefit every one.
Power plants in cool or cold climates could be a local major source of temperate and tropical fruits and vegetables. The heat and CO2 would be virtually free. Win Win. Greenies where are you.
Harmless trace gas (necessary for photosynthesis) -> deadly poison
Great deal, isn’t it?
Why bother with this reaction?
Frankly I’m highly skeptical of claims regarding electro-catalyst processes simply because: 1) you have to use very expensive electricity to drive the reactions, 2) you have to use more man-made energy than proceeding the other way; 3) these types of reactions typically require operation at or near atmospheric pressure.
Typically low pressure processes are too large to be commercially competitive. It’s a matter of economies-of-scale. Pressurized processes typically require less steel per unit of product produced; because, the process equipment has smaller pipe/tank diameters than lower pressure system. This is a lesson the non-engineering academic community constantly fails to grasp.
(To be fair scientist in question… please keep in mind I did not pay the fee required to read the paper… so I was not able see if the reactions were being conducted at low or high pressure.)
Moreover, as a chemical engineer, I am highly skeptical of claims of economic viability when only carbon monoxide (CO) is being produced by a proposed process. While CO is a useful building block, it’s is only useful to the extent that excess hydrogen (H2) is available for conversion to higher hydrocarbons.
Simply put… it’s the cost of producing hydrogen, not CO, that makes hydrocarbon production expensive.
So, the proposed process makes no sense to me. Why make expensive CO (only) when you can inexpensively make both CO and H2 at the same time?
At present we ready and economically produce both CO and H2 via either the steam-reforming or the partial oxidization processes using natural gas as a feedstock.
The primary reactions are:
1) Steam-methane reforming
CH4 +H2O => CO + 3 H2 (mildly endothermic – energy consuming)
2) Partial Oxidation (synthesis gas process)
CH4 +O2 => 2 CO + 4 H2 (exothermic – energy producing)
Generally speaking steam-reforming is the less expensive route of these because 1) water is a cheap reactant compared to the pure oxygen needed for partial oxidation, 2) the nickel based reforming catalyst is inexpensive and fairly robust, 3) the energy required for reforming can be supplied with excessive combustion; 4) steam-reforming processes are generally more energy efficient than partial oxidation processes, and 5) the reforming reaction occurs at moderate pressure (about 40 atmospheres) which allows the construction of plants with exceptionally good economics of scale.
Technically it is possible design lower pressure partial oxidation process with lower capital investments than steam-reformers. But, this isn’t necessarily true when you’re trying to make higher value products downstream; because, the downstream reactions typically require higher pressures.
By illustration… the next level of useful building block chemicals are methanol and ammonia. Both require the availability of excess hydrogen to be produced economically.
For example, to make methanol with the reforming process requires the use of a common copper, zinc, and alumina catalyst at operating at 50-100 atms, 250 C, and a selectivity of greater than 99.8% via the primary reaction:
CO + 2 H2 => CH3OH
The excess H2 molecule produce by the reformer (see reforming reaction above) is converted to methanol via reaction of excess CO2 via the reaction:
CO2 + 3 H2 => CH3OH + H20
The excess water produced above in the reaction above is consumed in a water-shift reactor via the reaction:
CO + 2 H20 => CO2 + H2 (exothermic)
For ammonia (NH3) production the required steps are similar:
1) Steam-methane reforming
CH4 +H2O => CO + 3 H2
2) Water shift reaction (to optimize hydrogen production)
CO + 2 H2O => CO2 + H2
3) Carbon dioxide removal (simple and cheap physical absorption with an amine solution)
4) Methanation to remove residual CO and CO2 via the reactions:
CO + 3 H2 => CH4 + H20
CO2 + 4 H2 => CH4 + 2 H20
5) Ammonia production via the reaction:
3 H2 + N2 => 2 NH3
Bottom line…. You can see the inherit advantages of these processes ability to produce both CO and H2.
So… again why bother converting CO2 to CO?
Now we have chemistry grads who didn’t take the thermodynamics option. Also, sheesh, what in hell would we do with a few hundred gigatonnes of “products” made from the 30Gt of Anthropo CO2 annually. Stupid, I know, but I’m going to investigate silver futures and … er coal investments. Scientists used to be more careful about announcing stupid things.