New Catalyst Developed to Convert Greenhouse Gas into Useful Chemicals

First Posted: Feb 03, 2014 09:04 AM EST
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A team of international researchers have developed a new catalyst that can electrochemically convert greenhouse gases into carbon monoxide that can further be used to develop useful chemicals.

The researchers at the University of Delaware have developed a highly selective catalyst that can electrochemically convert carbon dioxide into carbon monoxide with 92 percent efficiency that can further be used to develop useful chemicals. The team was led by Feng Jiao, assistant professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering and Qi Lu, a postdoctoral fellow, and Jonathan Rosen, a graduate student.

"Converting carbon dioxide to useful chemicals in a selective and efficient way remains a major challenge in renewable and sustainable energy research," said Jiao.

The researchers discovered that the nano porous silver electrocatalyst was nearly 3,000 times more active when compared to polycrystalline silver that is mostly used for converting carbon dioxide to other useful chemicals. Apart from 81 percent selectivity, silver is also less expensive compared to the other metal catalyst. Being inorganic in nature, it the most stable material under drastic catalytic environments.

Jiao said, "The exceptionally high activity 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. The active sites on the curved internal surface required a much smaller than expected voltage to overcome the activation energy barrier needed to drive the reaction."

The carbon monoxide can further be used for producing synthetic fuels that lead to a 40 percent drop in greenhouse gas emissions.

To prove this, the study researchers compared to the UD-developed nano porous catalyst with other carbon dioxide electrocatalysts. This included polycrystalline silver and silver nanowires and nanoparticles.

When the catalyst was tested under the same conditions, the non porous silver catalyst had more advantage over the other catalyst in water conditions.

"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 study was funded by the American Chemical Society Petroleum Research Fund and the University of Delaware Research Foundation. The study was documented in Nature Communications.

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