Karen Frantz
GHG Monitor
2/07/2014
In a process that has the potential for driving a market for carbon, University of Delaware scientists have developed a more efficient tool for converting CO2 into carbon monoxide, which in turn can be used to produce useful chemicals. According to a paper published in Nature Communications late last week, the scientists found that using a nano-porous silver electrocatalyst, rather than polycrystalline silver, was more effective for converting CO2 into CO, with an efficiency rate of 92 percent. Although polycrystalline silver is commonly used for converting carbon dioxide, scientists found that using nano-porous silver is 3,000 times more active. “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 Feng Jiao, Assistant Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and the study’s head researcher, in UDaily, a University of Delaware online news publication. “We’re hopeful that the catalyst we’ve developed can pave the way toward future advances in this area.”
The carbon monoxide resulting from the conversion process could be used as feedstock in the Fischer-Tropsch process, “a well-known and well-characterized process that has been used in industry to produce chemicals and synthetic fuels from syngas for many decades,” the paper said. “By coupling the catalytic reduction of CO2 to CO with the Fischer-Tropsch process to produce synthetic fuels and industrial chemicals, the estimated maximum reduction of atmospheric CO2 emissions is 40 percent.”
Jiao told GHG Monitor that it was very likely that the conversion process could be applied to a power plant, and that the team is working on developing new reactors that would be able to take the CO2 feedstock directly from power plants. The team is also working on new designs to demonstrate the feasibility of commercial processes to convert CO2 to CO in an efficient and economic manner, Jiao said. He added that the team is looking for other catalysts. “For the reported catalyst, it shows excellent CO selectivity,” he said. “We are also designing novel catalysts other than silver-based ones, which are able to obtain CO2 reduction products, such as formate, methanol and methane.”
