MIT News November 13, 2024 Electrochemical CO2 reduction has emerged as a promising CO2 utilization technology, with Gas Diffusion Electrodes becoming the predominant architecture to maximize performance. The electrodes must maintain robust hydrophobicity to prevent flooding, while also ensuring high conductivity to minimize ohmic losses. Researchers at MIT demonstrated a hierarchically conductive electrode architecture which overcame the scaling limitations by employing inter-woven microscale conductors within a hydrophobic expanded Polytetrafluoroethylene membrane. They developed a model which captured the spatial variability in voltage and product distribution on electrodes due to ohmic losses and used it to rationally design the hierarchical architecture which […]
Tag Archives: Carbon dioxide
Carbon dioxide, the main culprit of global warming, reborn as an antioxidant substance
Phys.org May 24, 2024 Microbial CO2 electroreduction (mCO2ER) offers a promising approach for producing high value multicarbon reductants from CO2 by combining CO2 fixing microorganisms with conducting materials. The solubility and availability of CO2 in an aqueous electrolyte pose significant limitations in this system. A team of researchers in South Korea demonstrated the efficient production of long-chain multicarbon reductants within a wet amine-based catholyte medium during mCO2ER. Optimizing the concentration of the biocompatible CO2 absorbent, monoethanolamine (MEA) led to enhanced CO2 fixation in the electroautotroph bacteria. MEA in the catholyte medium redirected the carbon flux towards carotenoid biosynthesis during mCO2ER. […]
Can clay capture carbon dioxide?
Phys.org February 9, 2023 Although numerous investigations have studied the formation of H2CO3 in water from CO2, the conversion of CO2 to H2CO3 in nanopores, and how it differs from that in bulk water, has not been understood. Researchers at Sandia National Laboratory used ReaxFF metadynamics molecular simulations to demonstrate striking differences in the free energy of CO2 conversion to H2CO3 in bulk and nanoconfined aqueous environments. They found that nanoconfinement not only reduces the energy barrier but also reverses the reaction from endothermic in bulk water to exothermic in nanoconfined water. Charged intermediates are observed more often under nanoconfinement […]