{"id":34,"date":"2017-02-23T16:32:09","date_gmt":"2017-02-23T16:32:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.techfragments.com\/?p=34"},"modified":"2022-08-03T19:21:23","modified_gmt":"2022-08-03T19:21:23","slug":"carbon-dioxide-uv-catalysis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/techfragments.com\/carbon-dioxide-uv-catalysis\/","title":{"rendered":"Carbon Dioxide Converted Into Fuel With Ultraviolet Light Catalysis"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nanoparticles that help convert carbon dioxide into methane using only ultraviolet light as an energy source have been developed by researchers at Duke University. The team now hopes to develop a version that would run on natural sunlight, a potential treasure for alternative energy.<\/p>\n

Chemists have long sought an efficient, light-driven catalyst to power this reaction, which could help reduce the growing levels of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere by converting it into methane, a key building block for many types of fuels.<\/p>\n

“The fact that you can use light to influence a specific reaction pathway is very exciting. This discovery will really advance the understanding of catalysis,”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

said Jie Liu<\/a>, the George B. Geller professor of chemistry at Duke University.<\/p>\n

Plasmonic Rhodium Nanoparticles<\/h2>\n

Not only are the rhodium nanoparticles made more efficient when illuminated by light, they have the advantage of strongly favoring the formation of methane rather than an equal mix of methane and undesirable side-products like carbon monoxide. This strong “selectivity” of the light-driven catalysis may also extend to other important chemical reactions, the researchers say. Despite being one of the rarest elements on Earth, rhodium plays a surprisingly important role in our everyday lives.<\/p>\n

Small amounts of the silvery grey metal are used to speed up or “catalyze” a number of key industrial processes, including those that make drugs, detergents and nitrogen fertilizer, and they even play a major role breaking down toxic pollutants in the catalytic converters of our cars.<\/p>\n

Rhodium accelerates these reactions with an added boost of energy, which usually comes in the form of heat because it is easily produced and absorbed. However, high temperatures also cause problems, like shortened catalyst lifetimes and the unwanted synthesis of undesired products.<\/p>\n

In the past two decades, scientists have explored new and useful ways that light can be used to add energy to bits of metal shrunk down to the nanoscale, a field called plasmonics. Henry Everitt, an adjunct professor of physics at Duke and senior research scientist at the Army’s Aviation and Missile RD&E Center at Redstone Arsenal, AL., said:<\/p>\n

“Effectively, plasmonic metal nanoparticles act like little antennas that absorb visible or ultraviolet light very efficiently and can do a number of things like generate strong electric fields. For the last few years there has been a recognition that this property might be applied to catalysis.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Methane Reaction<\/h2>\n

Xiao Zhang, a graduate student in Jie Liu’s lab, synthesized rhodium nanocubes that were the optimal size for absorbing near-ultraviolet light. He then placed small amounts of the charcoal-colored nanoparticles into a reaction chamber and passed mixtures of carbon dioxide and hydrogen through the powdery material.<\/p>\n

When Zhang heated the nanoparticles to 300 degrees Celsius, the reaction generated an equal mix of methane and carbon monoxide, a poisonous gas.<\/p>\n

When he turned off the heat and instead illuminated them with a high-powered ultraviolet LED lamp, Zhang was not only surprised to find that carbon dioxide and hydrogen reacted at room temperature, but that the reaction almost exclusively produced methane.<\/p>\n

“We discovered that when we shine light on rhodium nanostructures, we can force the chemical reaction to go in one direction more than another,” Everitt said. “So we get to choose how the reaction goes with light in a way that we can’t do with heat.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This selectivity \u2014 the ability to control the chemical reaction so that it generates the desired product with little or no side-products \u2014 is an important factor in determining the cost and feasibility of industrial-scale reactions, Zhang says.<\/p>\n

“If the reaction has only 50 percent selectivity, then the cost will be double what it would be if the selectively is nearly 100 percent,” Zhang said. “And if the selectivity is very high, you can also save time and energy by not having to purify the product.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Now the team plans to test whether their light-powered technique might drive other reactions that are currently catalyzed with heated rhodium metal. By tweaking the size of the rhodium nanoparticles, they also hope to develop a version of the catalyst that is powered by sunlight, creating a solar-powered reaction that could be integrated into renewable energy systems.<\/p>\n

Original Study: Product selectivity in plasmonic photocatalysis for carbon dioxide hydrogenation<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nanoparticles that help convert carbon dioxide into methane using only ultraviolet light as an energy source have been developed by researchers at Duke University. The team now hopes to develop a version that would run on natural sunlight, a potential treasure for alternative energy. Chemists have long sought an efficient, light-driven catalyst to power this…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":35,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[75],"tags":[93,92],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/techfragments.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/techfragments.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/techfragments.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techfragments.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techfragments.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/techfragments.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":575,"href":"https:\/\/techfragments.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34\/revisions\/575"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techfragments.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/techfragments.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techfragments.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techfragments.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}