Researchers Develop New Material That Converts CO2 into Methanol Using Sunlight...
source link: https://science.slashdot.org/story/24/03/30/049239/researchers-develop-new-material-that-converts-co2-into-methanol-using-sunlight
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Researchers Develop New Material That Converts CO2 into Methanol Using Sunlight
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"Researchers have successfully transformed CO2 into methanol," reports SciTechDaily, "by shining sunlight on single atoms of copper deposited on a light-activated material, a discovery that paves the way for creating new green fuels."
Tara LeMercier, a PhD student who carried out the experimental work at the University of Nottingham, School of Chemistry, said: "We measured the current generated by light and used it as a criterion to judge the quality of the catalyst. Even without copper, the new form of carbon nitride is 44 times more active than traditional carbon nitride. However, to our surprise, the addition of only 1 mg of copper per 1 g of carbon nitride quadrupled this efficiency. Most importantly the selectivity changed from methane, another greenhouse gas, to methanol, a valuable green fuel."
Professor Andrei Khlobystov, School of Chemistry, University of Nottingham, said: "Carbon dioxide valorization holds the key for achieving the net-zero ambition of the UK. It is vitally important to ensure the sustainability of our catalyst materials for this important reaction. A big advantage of the new catalyst is that it consists of sustainable elements — carbon, nitrogen, and copper — all highly abundant on our planet." This invention represents a significant step towards a deep understanding of photocatalytic materials in CO2 conversion. It opens a pathway for creating highly selective and tuneable catalysts where the desired product could be dialed up by controlling the catalyst at the nanoscale.
"The research has been published in the Sustainable Energy & Fuels journal of the Royal Society of Chemistry."
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader Baron_Yam for sharing the article.
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So, like, there were human civilizations that preceded the end of the last ice age?
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Well, that "ice age" did drive them out of Greenland. And a much more severe one earlier drove the hominins out pf Europe...for awhile.
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Maybe there were, maybe not, but here we are - a civilization - when the next ice age arrives.
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but what does bother me is that a lot of this is getting funding not because it's good research but as a propaganda tool so that fossil fuel companies can say "see! you don't need to worry about climate change! You can keep driving your Hummer!" now that climate change is having real world impacts on enough voters to matter.
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Marketers and lobbyists will spin anything. If this tech turns out to be feasible, I think it's a good thing. We can still demand that the fossil fuel industry reduce its emissions at the same time as switching to net-zero energy sources.
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"see! you don't need to worry about climate change! You can keep driving your Hummer!"
Why is that preference so distasteful to you, even if the pollution produced could be mitigated? Are you trying to change hearts and minds by using science to legislate your particular arbitrary preferences?
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Because the externalities of driving an ICE Hummer go way beyond carbon:
1. Tailpipe emissions of NOx, SOx, PM2.5 etc
2. RTA morbidity and mortality (especially high for non-occupants with these large vehicles that are designed to appeal to and bolster ideas of masculinity expressed through aggressive driving)
3. Noise
4. Vibration damage
EV Hummers have none of #1 (but do add to non-tailpipe emissions at power generation sites), and much less of #3 and practically none of #4. But they are even worse for #2, bec
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Can’t somebody come up with a process that converts researchers into CO2?
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They're already full of hot air.
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It's funny, but when summer comes around I still turn on the AC despite the fact that there will be another winter if I just wait a few months.
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Good thing you have an off switch for that.
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It's nice that you are a complete idiot; you've accomplished something in life. It's just a shame it's not something useful.
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When you're out of ammo, you always have insults to fall back on. A true democrat thru and thru.
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"Most importantly the selectivity changed from methane, another greenhouse gas, to methanol, a valuable green fuel."
Speaks to who they are letting into PhD programs and the quality of their critical thinking skills.
Suppose, after many years and intense work and expenditure of money, this were to be a way to convert sunlight and CO2 into methane at industrial scale.
Methane is a clean burning fuel, and this process for generating it from CO2 would make it net zero, but we can't have any of that, can we
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Yes, true, but methanol has some advantages. It's a liquid, which is much easier to store and transport than a gas. And if some of it spills, it doesn't escape into the atmosphere (at least, not immediately) unlike a methane leak that injects a greenhouse gas right into the atmosphere.
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Pump the methanol back down old oil wells for carbon capture.
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Or use it in place of oil to reduce the amount of new carbon added to the atmosphere. Close the loop.
Right now, the best way to fight global warming isn't sequestration, it's finding ways to avoid releasing already sequestered carbon. Sequestration only makes sense once you're not diverting power from that purpose, as sequestration is inherently energy-negative.
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You can do that with CO2 - it becomes liquid at that pressure and stays there.
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Maybe I'll be able to burn it is one of my future cars. Time will tell how this process competes with e-fuels.
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"Clean burning" means that it burns to CO2 and water without residue. In particular, no soot particles or NOx.
That is the definition of "clean burning". It does not mean that there is no CO2, but it does mean there are no other greenhouse gasses. The definition is from the 19th century and referred originally to clean burning coal. Cleaning the boiler furnace from residue was costly.
Methane is clean burning, and it CO2 is a less potent greenhouse gas than methane, so burning methane is better than releasing it into the atmosphere as it is, which is of course only saying that one thing is slightly less bad than another, but methane is not even the topic of this article. So your link is not relevant.
The topic is methanol. Methanol is not a greenhouse gas. It is not a gas at all. It is a liquid.
Methanol is clean burning, as the article says. But that doesn't mean that it is a good idea to burn it. It would provide an alternative to fossil fuels though, which means that no additional carbon would have to enter the atmosphere even if we were to burn it. Which, again, is a way of saying that one thing is less bad than another, because the way things are, we need to capture carbon from the atmosphere and then not release it again. Which we actually can do with methanol.
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Methanol fuel cells already exist. And of course it does burn too, you could use it fuel a combined cycle gas turbine generator too.
And you can Fischer-Tropsch methanol into anything you want.
How long does the catalyst stay clean and how hard is it to regenerate are the next questions.
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Methanol is a very useful ingredient in plastics and dyes, and is also widely used as a disinfectant.
We can also just store it.
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by walkerp1 ( 523460 ) on Saturday March 30, 2024 @02:12PM (#64356836)
All, before we get too enmeshed with "Science, why?", let's not forget "Science!"
"This invention represents a significant step towards a deep understanding of photocatalytic materials in CO2 conversion. It opens a pathway for creating highly selective and tuneable catalysts where the desired product could be dialed up by controlling the catalyst at the nanoscale."
This sounds like pretty exciting chemistry to me, no matter the reason for researching it or the possible uses for this exact case.-
I think you're being over-enthusiastic. Yes, this could be a worthwhile creation, but I'd need to know lots more before I got that enthusiastic. (E.g. does it only work on pure CO2...the summary didn't say. What about standard temperature and pressure (i.e. STP)? How susceptible is the catalyst to poisoning (and by what)? Etc.
As stated this could be a zero-cost (well, ongoing cost) method to produce fuel-stock out of air and sunlight, so the claims are substantial. But in such cases one always needs t
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When will we see this tried on the ISS?
I'm sure the spacefarers would prefer ethanol, but methanol is almost as good.
I was also thinking that it could be useful on submarines, but there is not quite as much sunlight under the sea.
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Itâ(TM)s possible to âoegasifyâ methanol and then reduce it to methane and water, both of which are extremely useful on space ships, so yeh, indeed it could be.
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Thin film PV has a lot of room to get material consumption per m2 down. Panels which you have to pump water and gasses through though, not so much.
Just keep the synthesis centralised and the light collection distributed through PV if you want to use solar.
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The key central number is buried in an inconspicuous sentence most of the way down: Average quantum yield, i.e. efficiency of conversion, is.06%.
Not the paper's fault, but it is so very tiresome the way writers compulsively and breathtakingly wank about how every little research achievement is some sort of world-changing revolution. The reality is that this is a neat discovery and a possible hint of which way to go, but it's about as useful as a copper oxide solar cell.-
Cool. So essentially irrelevant in practice. Still, fundamental research is valuable. I do agree the way how anything is hyped these days is quite repulsive.
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Basic chemistry would tell you that converting CO2 to something else is going to be very expensive and energy intensive. Copper as a catalyst would not be feasible at scale (esp. since copper is already necessary and supply falling short for even the current demand of electrification) That is why carbon sequestration is always a bad idea as you put more carbon in the air than you take out. Much better to use the energy somewhere else unless you have an excess of low cost energy that must be used (eg nuclear
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Why hype the zero-sum idea that the low efficiency is a hard limit that can never be exceeded, so everyone should just give up now and if not I'll cut your funding till you give up, because obviously this type of thing is just hype and no, I'm not hyping anti-hype at all, because wouldn't that be self-unaware, and am I not the Captain of this rational, super-consistent story I'm telling here?
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But what does "quantum yield" mean? The only number that really matters is energy in vs energy out. If it takes 1J of energy to produce fuel that yields 2J, then great. If it takes 2J to produce 1J, then not so great.
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Heavily depends where that 2J is coming from. If it was not going to be used elsewhere, then neat.
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You cannot make 2J of anything with 1J of anything, that would violate conservation of energy. What you can do is use something that already has some usable energy stored in it and inject a bit more to make it even more useful to you.
If you could have a panel that needed sunlight and a barrel of water to produce a barrel of methanol and so long as the cost of the initial setup was less than the lifetime output of the device, would it really matter if it's horribly inefficient?
Obviously the answer is 'yes' b
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So, how does the cost and yield of this method compare with traditional methods of converting CO2 and sunlight into useful fuels? E.g. a field of grass or forrest of trees?
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Now if they can just get this process to make Butanol we're set for Carbon neutral, green, alternatives to gasoline that doesn't require a complete replacement of the current fuel distribution infrastructure. With an "at pump" Octane of 87 Butanol can be used as a drop in replacement for Gasoline in any ratio mix unlike methanol and doesn't require modification to the engine beyond replacing any natural rubber fuel hoses with a synthetic rubber that won't degrade from the drying effects of alcohols.
https:/ [wikipedia.org]
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Cooper is not that abundant [wikimedia.org], but perhaps if you need a small quantity...
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Doesn't that chart show it in the middle, so pretty abundant? Why are there so many abandoned copper mines (e.g. in Ajo, Arizona) that become uneconomical because prices crashed, not because the copper ran out?
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Now go one more step and modify it so that it produces Ethanol and you just might win the Nobel.
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