{"id":643301,"date":"2026-08-18T09:30:10","date_gmt":"2026-08-18T09:30:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/643301\/"},"modified":"2026-08-18T09:30:10","modified_gmt":"2026-08-18T09:30:10","slug":"new-method-converts-emissions-to-fuel-feedstock-without-purification","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/643301\/","title":{"rendered":"New method converts emissions to fuel feedstock without purification\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0An international team of researchers developed a method to convert\u00a0the carbon\u00a0dioxide emitted from factories into fuel\u00a0feedstock\u00a0without cleaning or purifying the gas.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Adobe<\/p>\n

Traditionally, carbon capture requires costly, energy-intensive purification steps. A paper published in\u00a0Science<\/a>\u00a0estimates that separating\u00a0carbon dioxide from coal flue gas and compressing it to 150 bar\u00a0requires at least 0.11\u00a0megawatt-hours per ton, or about 0.4 GJ.\u00a0The U.S. Department of Energy\u2019s National Energy Technology Laboratory estimates the average cost of carbon dioxide capture for four processes with\u00a0CO\u2082 less than 50% is\u00a0$61.80 per ton<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The researchers say the\u00a0new approach\u00a0could help avoid these costly, inefficient purification steps, potentially making carbon capture and conversion more economical, though the technology has not yet been tested at\u00a0industrial\u00a0scale.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The\u00a0new\u00a0method uses an organic\u00a0solvent mixture, dimethyl sulfide (DMS)\u00a0and acetonitrile (ACN),\u00a0to convert carbon dioxide from industrial emissions into carbon monoxide, which is used to manufacture fuels and chemicals. The researchers published their findings in\u00a0Nature Communications<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Industrial flue gases are mostly made up of nitrogen,\u00a0with\u00a010% to\u00a025% carbon dioxide<\/a>, which has made efforts to convert captured carbon\u00a0challenging\u00a0as\u00a0oxygen\u00a0triggers\u00a0competing reactions.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

In most carbon capture methods, the carbon dioxide\u00a0needs\u00a0to be separated and purified before it is converted.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

The team\u2019s organic solvent mixture weakens\u00a0hydrogen\u00a0bonding, which suppresses unwanted side reactions and favors\u00a0the carbon\u00a0conversion.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe key is controlling the solvent environment around the electrochemical reaction,\u201d\u00a0Xiaowan Bai, who worked on the research, said in an email to R&D World. \u201d This allows CO2\u00a0to be selectively converted into carbon monoxide (CO) even when the gas contains large amounts of oxygen, meaning the CO2\u00a0does not need to be extensively separated and purified first.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Using a simulated industrial flue gas\u00a0containing\u00a015% CO\u2082 and 8% oxygen, the researchers achieved\u00a0CO Faradaic efficiency exceeding 95%\u00a0at 20\u00a0bar.\u00a0The\u00a0direct reactive capture (DRC)\u00a0process\u00a0consumed\u00a030.7 gigajoules of energy per ton of CO produced.\u00a0At 1%\u00a0CO\u2082\u00a0and 15% oxygen, the\u00a0system maintained\u00a0CO Faradaic efficiency above 90%.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

The technology\u00a0operated\u00a0continuously for over\u00a0100 hours\u00a0while\u00a0maintaining\u00a0high performance.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

The team coupled the system with a high-efficiency solar cell, achieving solar-to-fuel efficiency of approximately 5.5%.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cActual flue gas is more complex than the simulated mixture used in the laboratory, so the system will need to tolerate additional impurities and operate reliably at much larger current densities and production rates,\u201d\u00a0Bai said.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe next milestone is to move from laboratory-scale proof of concept towards larger\u00a0electrolyzers\u00a0and testing with real industrial flue gas. We also aim to further improve\u00a0the energy\u00a0efficiency and operating lifetime, while exploring integration with renewable electricity. Beyond CO production, an important future direction is the direct conversion of captured CO2\u00a0into\u00a0higher-value\u00a0multicarbon\u00a0products,\u201d\u00a0she added.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u00a0An international team of researchers developed a method to convert\u00a0the carbon\u00a0dioxide emitted from factories into fuel\u00a0feedstock\u00a0without cleaning or…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":643302,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[74],"tags":[19221,102730,17829,12162,19448,18,12695,272135,19,272136,17,82],"class_list":["post-643301","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-carbon-capture","tag-carbon-conversion","tag-carbon-dioxide","tag-carbon-dioxide-emissions","tag-carbon-monoxide","tag-eire","tag-emissions","tag-flue-gas","tag-ie","tag-industrial-flue","tag-ireland","tag-technology"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/117115816378022925","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/643301","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=643301"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/643301\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/643302"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=643301"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=643301"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=643301"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}