{"id":128572,"date":"2023-06-27T07:26:00","date_gmt":"2023-06-27T05:26:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/?p=128572"},"modified":"2023-06-26T10:57:55","modified_gmt":"2023-06-26T08:57:55","slug":"clean-sustainable-fuels-made-from-thin-air-and-plastic-waste","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/clean-sustainable-fuels-made-from-thin-air-and-plastic-waste\/","title":{"rendered":"Clean, sustainable fuels made \u2018from thin air\u2019 and plastic waste"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n

The researchers, from the University of Cambridge, developed a solar-powered reactor that converts captured CO2<\/sub> and plastic waste into sustainable fuels and other valuable chemical products. In tests, CO2<\/sub> was converted into syngas, a key building block for sustainable liquid fuels, and plastic bottles were converted into glycolic acid, which is widely used in the cosmetics industry.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Carbon capture from air and its photoelectrochemical conversion into fuel with simultaneous waste plastic conversion into chemicals.
\u00a9<\/strong> Ariffin Mohamad Annuar<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Unlike earlier tests of their solar fuels technology however, the team took CO2<\/sub> from real-world sources \u2013 such as industrial exhaust or the air itself. The researchers were able to capture and concentrate the CO2<\/sub> and convert it into sustainable fuel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although improvements are needed before this technology can be used at an industrial scale, the results<\/a>, reported in the journal Joule<\/em>, represent another important step toward the production of clean fuels to power the economy, without the need for environmentally destructive oil and gas extraction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For several years, Professor Erwin Reisner\u2019s research group<\/a>, based in the Yusuf Hamied Department of Chemistry, has been developing sustainable, net-zero carbon fuels inspired by photosynthesis \u2013 the process by which plants convert sunlight into food \u2013 using artificial leaves. These artificial leaves convert CO2<\/sub> and water into fuels using just the power of the sun.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To date, their solar-driven experiments have used pure, concentrated CO2<\/sub> from a cylinder, but for the technology to be of practical use, it needs to be able to actively capture CO2<\/sub> from industrial processes, or directly from the air. However, since CO2<\/sub> is just one of many types of molecules in the air we breathe, making this technology selective enough to convert highly diluted CO2<\/sub> is a huge technical challenge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe\u2019re not just interested in decarbonisation, but de-fossilisation \u2013 we need to completely eliminate fossil fuels in order to create a truly circular economy,\u201d said Reisner. \u201cIn the medium term, this technology could help reduce carbon emissions by capturing them from industry and turning them into something useful, but ultimately, we need to cut fossil fuels out of the equation entirely and capture CO2<\/sub> from the air.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The researchers took their inspiration from carbon capture and storage (CCS), where CO2<\/sub> is captured and then pumped and stored underground.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cCCS is a technology that\u2019s popular with the fossil fuel industry as a way to reduce carbon emissions while continuing oil and gas exploration,\u201d said Reisner. \u201cBut if instead of carbon capture and storage, we had carbon capture and utilisation, we could make something useful from CO2<\/sub> instead of burying it underground, with unknown long-term consequences, and eliminate the use of fossil fuels.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The researchers adapted their solar-driven technology so that it works with flue gas or directly from the air, converting CO2<\/sub> and plastics into fuel and chemicals using only the power of the sun.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By bubbling air through the system containing an alkaline solution, the CO2<\/sub> selectively gets trapped, and the other gases present in air, such as nitrogen and oxygen, harmlessly bubble out. This bubbling process allows the researchers to concentrate the CO2<\/sub> from air in solution, making it easier to work with.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The integrated system contains a photocathode and an anode. The system has two compartments: on one side is captured CO2<\/sub> solution that gets converted into syngas, a simple fuel. On the other plastics are converted into useful chemicals using only sunlight.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe plastic component is an important trick to this system,\u201d said co-first author Dr Motiar Rahaman. \u201cCapturing and using CO2<\/sub> from the air makes the chemistry more difficult. But, if we add plastic waste to the system, the plastic donates electrons to the CO2<\/sub>. The plastic breaks down to glycolic acid, which is widely used in the cosmetics industry, and the CO2<\/sub> is converted into syngas, which is a simple fuel.\u201d<\/p>

\u201cThis solar-powered system takes two harmful waste products \u2013 plastic and carbon emissions \u2013 and converts them into something truly useful,\u201d said co-first author Dr Sayan Kar.<\/p>

\u201cInstead of storing CO2<\/sub> underground, like in CCS, we can capture it from the air and make clean fuel from it,\u201d said Rahaman. \u201cThis way, we can cut out the fossil fuel industry from the process of fuel production, which can hopefully help us avoid climate destruction.\u201d<\/p>

\u201cThe fact that we can effectively take CO2<\/sub> from air and make something useful from it is special,\u201d said Kar. \u201cIt\u2019s satisfying to see that we can actually do it using only sunlight.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The scientists are currently working on a bench-top demonstrator device with improved efficiency and practicality to highlight the benefits of coupling direct air capture with CO2<\/sub> utilisation as a path to a zero-carbon future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The research was supported in part by the Weizmann Institute of Science, the European Commission Marie Sk\u0142odowska-Curie Fellowship, the Winton Programme for the Physics of Sustainability, and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), part of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI). Erwin Reisner is a Fellow and Motiar Rahaman is a Research Associate of St John\u2019s College, Cambridge. Erwin Reisner leads the Cambridge Circular Plastics Centre<\/a> (CirPlas), which aims to eliminate plastic waste by combining blue-sky thinking with practical measures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reference<\/strong><\/em><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Sayan Kar, Motiar Rahaman et al. \u2018Integrated Capture and Solar-driven Utilization of CO2 from Flue Gas and Air<\/a>.\u2019 Joule (2023). DOI: 10.1016\/j.joule.2023.05.022<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The researchers, from the University of Cambridge, developed a solar-powered reactor that converts captured CO2 and plastic waste into sustainable fuels and other valuable chemical products. In tests, CO2 was converted into syngas, a key building block for sustainable liquid fuels, and plastic bottles were converted into glycolic acid, which is widely used in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","nova_meta_subtitle":"Researchers have demonstrated how carbon dioxide can be captured from industrial processes \u2013 or even directly from the air \u2013 and transformed into clean, sustainable fuels using just the energy from the sun","footnotes":""},"categories":[5571],"tags":[10744,12330,10416,19659,19340,15788,18669,12450],"supplier":[20831,1311],"class_list":["post-128572","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-co2-based","tag-carboncapture","tag-ccu","tag-circulareconomy","tag-convertco2","tag-decarbonisation","tag-solarenergy","tag-sustainablefuel","tag-syngas","supplier-joule-journal","supplier-university-of-cambridge-uk"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128572","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=128572"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128572\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=128572"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=128572"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=128572"},{"taxonomy":"supplier","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/supplier?post=128572"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}