Engineers develop an efficient process to make fuel from carbon dioxide

Now we can put the climate hysteria to rest! Human ingenuity took care of the CO2 scare!

"The search is on worldwide to find ways to extract carbon dioxide from the air or from power plant exhaust and then make it into something useful. One of the more promising ideas is to make it into a stable fuel that can replace fossil fuels in some applications. But most such conversion processes have had problems with low carbon efficiency, or they produce fuels that can be hard to handle, toxic, or flammable.

Now, researchers at MIT and Harvard University have developed an efficient process that can convert carbon dioxide into formate, a liquid or solid material that can be used like hydrogen or methanol to power a fuel cell and generate electricity. Potassium or sodium formate, already produced at industrial scales and commonly used as a de-icer for roads and sidewalks, is nontoxic, nonflammable, easy to store and transport, and can remain stable in ordinary steel tanks to be used months, or even years, after its production. ..."

"Highlights

• Impacts of CO2 partial pressure on local pH and carbon efficiency are gauged

• CO2, bicarbonate, and carbonate equilibrium are key to achieving high carbon efficiency

• Bicarbonate-to-formate electrochemical conversion generates no net acid or base

• Formate is a potential solid fuel for seasonal energy storage

Summary

Carbon efficiency is one of the most pressing problems of carbon dioxide electroreduction today. While there have been studies on anion exchange membrane electrolyzers with carbon dioxide (gas) and bipolar membrane electrolyzers with bicarbonate (aqueous) feedstocks, both suffer from low carbon efficiency. In anion exchange membrane electrolyzers, this is due to carbonate anion crossover, whereas in bipolar membrane electrolyzers, the exsolution of carbon dioxide (gas) from the bicarbonate solution is the culprit. Here, we first elucidate the root cause of the low carbon efficiency of liquid bicarbonate electrolyzers with thermodynamic calculations and then achieve carbon-efficient carbon dioxide electroreduction by adopting a near-neutral-pH cation exchange membrane, a glass fiber intermediate layer, and carbon dioxide (gas) partial pressure management. We convert highly concentrated bicarbonate solution to solid formate fuel with a yield (carbon efficiency) of greater than 96%. A device test is demonstrated at 100 mA cm−2 with a full-cell voltage of 3.1 V for over 200 h."

Engineers develop an efficient process to make fuel from carbon dioxide | MIT News | Massachusetts Institute of Technology The approach directly converts the greenhouse gas into formate, a solid fuel that can be stored indefinitely and could be used to heat homes or power industries.

A carbon-efficient bicarbonate electrolyzer (open access)

Graphical abstract