Your new post is loading...
Scientists from the Oak Ridge National Laboratory claim to have produced one of the most usable of all chemicals - ethanol - in a process conducted at room temperature that effectively reverses the combustion process...
Employing a catalyst made of copper nanoparticles embedded in spikes of carbon, the team found that electricity applied at just 1.2 volts was sufficient to convert CO2 suspended in water into ethanol. In effect, the team were able to produce a complicated chemical reaction, essentially reversing the combustion process, with relative ease and an initial conversion rate of some 63 percent. This was a surprise to the researchers, as this type of electrochemical reaction often produces many different chemicals, including methane, ethylene, and carbon monoxide.
"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," says Dr Adam Rondinone, of ORNL. "Ethanol was a surprise – it's extremely difficult to go straight from carbon dioxide to ethanol with a single catalyst. We discovered somewhat by accident that this material worked, we were trying to study the first step of a proposed reaction when we realized that the catalyst was doing the entire reaction on its own."
We're learning about the chemistry of the combustion process - a new type of catalyst (nano copper) allows to reverse the process and produce ethanol from CO2...