Scientists Turn Carbon Emissions Into Usable Energy

“Carbon capture, utilization, and sequestration (CCUS) technologies have recently received a great deal of attention for providing a pathway in dealing with global climate change,” says Professor Kim. “The key to that technology is the easy conversion of chemically stable CO2 molecules to other materials.” He adds, “Our new system has solved this problem with CO2 dissolution mechanism.”

Much of human CO2 emissions are absorbed by the ocean and turned into acidity. The researchers focused on this phenomenon and came up with the idea of melting CO2 into water to induce an electrochemical reaction. If acidity increases, the number of protons increases, which in turn increases the power to attract electrons. If a battery system is created based on this phenomenon, electricity can be produced by removing CO2.

Their Hybrid Na-CO2 System, just like a fuel cell, consists of a cathode (sodium metal), separator (NASICON), and anode (catalyst). Unlike other batteries, catalysts are contained in water and are connected by a lead wire to a cathode. When CO2 is injected into the water, the entire reaction gets started, eliminating CO2 and creating electricity and H2. At this time, the conversion efficiency of CO2 is high at 50%.

“This hybrid Na-CO2 cell, which adopts efficient CCUS technologies, not only utilizes CO2 as the resource for generating electrical energy but also produces the clean energy source, hydrogen,” says Jeongwon Kim in the Combined M.S/Ph.D. in Energy Engineering at UNIST, the co-first author for the research.

In particular, this system has shown stability to the point of operating for more than 1,000 hours without damage to electrodes. The system can be applied to remove CO2 by inducing voluntary chemical reactions.

“This research will lead to more derived research and will be able to produce H2 and electricity more effectively when electrolytes, separator, system design, and electrocatalysts are improved,” said Professor Kim.

Contacts and sources:
JooHyeon Heo
Ulsan National Institute Of Science and Technology (UNIST)

Citation:”Efficient CO2 Utilization via a Hybrid Na-CO2 System Based on CO2 Dissolution,”  Changmin Kim et. al.,  iScience, (2018).