Scientists accidentally learn how to turn carbon dioxide into fuel

LONDON: Scientists have accidentally discovered a way to reverse the combustion process, turning carbon dioxide back into a fuel. Researchers at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in the US used complex nanotechnology techniques to turn the dissolved gas into ethanol.

Because the materials used are relatively cheap, they believe the process could be used in industrial processes, including to store excess electricity generated by wind and solar power.

The researchers had hoped the technique would turn carbon dioxide into methanol, but ethanol was produced instead.

“We’re taking carbon dioxide, a waste product of combustion, and we’re pushing that combustion reaction backwards with very high selectivity to a useful fuel,” said Dr Adam Rondinone, lead author of a paper about the experiment in the journal ChemistrySelect.

“You can use ethanol in the current vehicle fleet right now with no modifications. Carbon dioxide is a problem. If we can use it, then we’re preventing it from going into the atmosphere.”

The team made a catalyst from carbon, copper and nitrogen and an electric current was used to trigger a reaction.

They had expected the process to be more complicated.

“We discovered somewhat by accident that this material worked,” Rondinone said. “We were trying to study the first step of a proposed reaction when we realised that the catalyst was doing the entire reaction on its own.

Ethanol was a surprise. It’s extremely difficult to go straight from carbon dioxide to ethanol with a single catalyst.” – The Independent