Carbon dioxide reactor makes 'Martian fuel'
A gas station on Mars? Chemical engineers envision the possibilities.


Date:
September 23, 2021
Source:
University of Cincinnati
Summary:
Engineers are developing new ways to convert greenhouse gases to
fuel to address climate change and get astronauts home from Mars.



FULL STORY ========================================================================== Engineers at the University of Cincinnati are developing new ways to
convert greenhouse gases to fuel to address climate change and get
astronauts home from Mars.


==========================================================================
UC College of Engineering and Applied Science assistant professor Jingjie
Wu and his students used a carbon catalyst in a reactor to convert carbon dioxide into methane. Known as the "Sabatier reaction" from the late
French chemist Paul Sabatier, it's a process the International Space
Station uses to scrub the carbon dioxide from air the astronauts breathe
and generate rocket fuel to keep the station in high orbit.

But Wu is thinking much bigger.

The Martian atmosphere is composed almost entirely of carbon dioxide.

Astronauts could save half the fuel they need for a return trip home by
making what they need on the red planet once they arrive, Wu said.

"It's like a gas station on Mars. You could easily pump carbon dioxide
through this reactor and produce methane for a rocket," Wu said.

UC's study was published in the journal Nature Communications with collaborators from Rice University, Shanghai University and East China University of Science and Technology.



==========================================================================
Wu began his career in chemical engineering by studying fuel cells for
electric vehicles but began looking at carbon dioxide conversion in his chemical engineering lab about 10 years ago.

"I realized that greenhouse gases were going to be a big issue in
society," Wu said. "A lot of countries realized that carbon dioxide is
a big issue for the sustainable development of our society. That's why
I think we need to achieve carbon neutrality." The Biden Administration
has set a goal of achieving a 50% reduction in greenhouse gas pollutants
by 2030 and an economy that relies on renewable energy by 2050.

"That means we'll have to recycle carbon dioxide," Wu said.

Wu and his students, including lead author and UC doctoral candidate
Tianyu Zhang, are experimenting with different catalysts such as graphene quantum dots -- layers of carbon just nanometers big -- that can increase
the yield of methane.



==========================================================================
Wu said the process holds promise to help mitigate climate change. But
it also has a big commercial advantage in producing fuel as a byproduct.

"The process is 100 times more productive than it was just 10 years
ago. So you can imagine that progress will come faster and faster,"
Wu said. "In the next 10 years, we'll have a lot of startup companies
to commercialize this technique." Wu's students are using different
catalysts to produce not only methane but ethylene. Called the world's
most important chemical, ethylene is used in the manufacture of plastics, rubber, synthetic clothing and other products.

"Green energy will be very important. In the future, it will represent
a huge market. So I wanted to work on it," Zhang said.

Synthesizing fuel from carbon dioxide becomes even more commercially
viable when coupled with renewable energy such as solar or wind power,
Wu said.

"Right now we have excess green energy that we just throw away. We can
store this excess renewable energy in chemicals," he said.

The process is scalable for use in power plants that can generate tons
of carbon dioxide. And it's efficient since the conversion can take
place right where excess carbon dioxide is produced.

Wu said advances in fuel production from carbon dioxide make him more
confident that humans will set foot on Mars in his lifetime.

"Right now if you want to come back from Mars, you would need to
bring twice as much fuel, which is very heavy," he said. "And
in the future, you'll need other fuels. So we can produce
methanol from carbon dioxide and use them to produce other
downstream materials. Then maybe one day we could live on Mars." ========================================================================== Story Source: Materials provided by University_of_Cincinnati. Original
written by Michael Miller. Note: Content may be edited for style and
length.


========================================================================== Journal Reference:
1. Tianyu Zhang, Weitao Li, Kai Huang, Huazhang Guo, Zhengyuan Li,
Yanbo
Fang, Ram Manohar Yadav, Vesselin Shanov, Pulickel M. Ajayan,
Liang Wang, Cheng Lian, Jingjie Wu. Regulation of functional
groups on graphene quantum dots directs selective CO2 to
CH4 conversion. Nature Communications, 2021; 12 (1) DOI:
10.1038/s41467-021-25640-1 ==========================================================================

Link to news story: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/09/210923132604.htm

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