{"id":157464,"date":"2024-06-05T07:22:00","date_gmt":"2024-06-05T05:22:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/?p=157464"},"modified":"2025-01-31T13:10:55","modified_gmt":"2025-01-31T12:10:55","slug":"controlling-water-transforming-greenhouse-gases","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/controlling-water-transforming-greenhouse-gases\/","title":{"rendered":"Controlling water, transforming greenhouse gases"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n

Carbon dioxide is\u00a0the<\/em>\u00a0greenhouse gas, singlehandedly responsible for\u00a078% of the change in energy balance in Earth’s atmosphere between 1990 and 2022<\/a>. A byproduct of burning fossil fuels, carbon dioxide enters the atmosphere from car exhaust and coal-fired power plants. Even some renewable energy resources produce a small amount of carbon dioxide, although at a tiny fraction of the amount coal and natural gas create.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

At its core, this molecule is just an arrangement of one carbon and two oxygen atoms that can be reorganized through a process called electrochemical carbon dioxide reduction (CO2<\/sub>R) into clean fuels and useful chemicals. But the process is often done at a loss, with competing processes pulling the atoms in unwanted directions that create unwanted byproducts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a paper published today in\u00a0Nature Catalysis<\/em><\/a>, researchers from the UChicago Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering\u2019s\u00a0Amanchukwu Lab<\/a>\u00a0outlined a way to manipulate water molecules to make CO2<\/sub>R more efficient, with the ultimate goal of creating a clean energy loop.<\/p>\n\n\n

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From left, PhD candidates Hannah Fejzi\u0107 and Reggie Gomes and postdoctoral scholars Ritesh Kumar and Bidushi Sarkar.
\u00a9 Reggie Gomes<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

Through their new method, the team was able to perform CO2<\/sub>R with nearly 100% efficiency under mildly acidic conditions, using either gold or zinc as catalysts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cImagine we can have green electricity from solar and wind, and then use this electricity to convert any carbon dioxide back into fuels,\u201d said PME PhD candidate Reggie Gomes, first author of the new paper<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Competing with HER<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Electrochemically disassembling a molecule is like the break shot in a game of pool. The previous arrangement disappears and the balls scatter across the table, coming to rest in new combinations \u2013 not always the ones the player intended.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Similarly, researchers performing CO2<\/sub>R use electricity and water to break up and rearrange the harmful greenhouse gas. This sends atoms of carbon and oxygen from the carbon dioxide caroming across the table with hydrogen atoms from the water.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cImagine we can have green electricity from solar and wind, and then use this electricity to convert any carbon dioxide back into fuels.\u201d – UChicago Pritzker Molecular Engineering PhD candidate Reggie Gomes.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

If it works as intended, the atoms form other, more desirable molecules that can be used as fuels or chemicals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But as the atoms scatter, stable pairings of two hydrogen atoms often form, a process called the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER). This makes CO2<\/sub>R less efficient, as energy and atoms that become hydrogen gas can\u2019t be part of the molecules the scientists were trying to create.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even in small quantities of water, CO2<\/sub>R is always competing with HER.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Amanchukwu Lab \u2013 which is most notable for its battery research \u2013 applied insights from aqueous batteries to the problem, hypothesizing that controlling the water with organic solvents could provide a solution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All that glitters<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Both CO2<\/sub>R and HER rely on water as a proton donor. Using organic solvents and acid additives, the team was able to tune the water behavior, finding the sweet spot where it donated the right amount of protons to create the intended molecules, not the hydrogen gas and other unwanted materials like carbonates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cIn general chemistry we learn that carbon dioxide reacts with hydroxide to form carbonate. That’s undesired because it depletes the molecule we want to valorize,\u201d said\u00a0Neubauer Family Assistant Professor of Molecular Engineering Chibueze Amanchukwu<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Many of the most-effective ways to perform CO2R rely on precious metals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cPlatinum, silver, gold \u2013 for research purposes, they’re great catalysts,\u201d Gomes<\/strong> said. \u201cThey’re very stable materials. But when you’re thinking about industrial applications, they become cost-prohibitive.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBecause of our discovery, we can now use an earth-abundant metal, zinc, because we now have a separate way to control water.\u201d – Neubauer Family Assistant Professor of Molecular Engineering Chibueze Amanchukwu.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

By engineering the electrolyte, the new method can get similar results using cheaper, more abundant materials.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cRight now, the best way to do this electrochemically at room temperature is to use precious metals. Gold and silver can suppress the hydrogen evolution reaction a little bit,\u201d Amanchukwu<\/strong> said. \u201cBecause of our discovery, we can now use an earth-abundant metal, zinc, because we now have a separate way to control water.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The American Chemical Society\u2019s Chemical & Engineering News recently named Amanchukwu one of its yearly Talented Twelve<\/a>\u201cyoung scientists who are making the world a better place through chemistry.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Original Publication<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

\u201cModulating water hydrogen bonding within a non-aqueous environment controls its reactivity in electrochemical transformations,\u201d Gomes, et al,\u00a0Nature Catalysis,\u00a0May 24, 2024. <\/em>DOI:\u00a0https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1038\/s41929-024-01162-z<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Funding: This work was primarily supported by the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science Basic Energy Sciences, Early Career Research Program (DE-SC0024103). Chibueze Amanchukwu was supported by the CIFAR Azrieli Global Scholars Program and Reggie Gomes was partially supported by the Roberto Rocca Fellowship Program.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Carbon dioxide is\u00a0the\u00a0greenhouse gas, singlehandedly responsible for\u00a078% of the change in energy balance in Earth’s atmosphere between 1990 and 2022. A byproduct of burning fossil fuels, carbon dioxide enters the atmosphere from car exhaust and coal-fired power plants. Even some renewable energy resources produce a small amount of carbon dioxide, although at a tiny fraction […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":157495,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","nova_meta_subtitle":"Scientists looking to convert carbon dioxide into clean fuels and useful chemicals often make hydrogen gas and carbonates as unwanted byproducts. A new paper from the UChicago Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering has found a cleaner path","footnotes":""},"categories":[5571],"tags":[5714,10744,10416,13911,10630,10743],"supplier":[1143,25617,5887],"class_list":["post-157464","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-co2-based","tag-biofuels","tag-carboncapture","tag-circulareconomy","tag-electricity","tag-hydrogen","tag-useco2","supplier-american-chemical-society-acs","supplier-pritzker-school-of-molecular-engineering","supplier-university-of-chicago"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157464","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\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=157464"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157464\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/157495"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=157464"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=157464"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=157464"},{"taxonomy":"supplier","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/supplier?post=157464"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}