The catalyst helps produce methanol directly from carbon dioxide

(Scientists recently discovered a new catalyst that could help produce clean methanol from carbon dioxide (CO ₂ ) at a low cost.

Scientists have found a way to convert carbon dioxide into methanol with a clean, low-cost production method. Methanol is the main ingredient in a wide range of products: plastics, adhesives and solvents, and methanol is also a promising fuel for transportation. Scientists have combined theory and experimentation to identify a nickel-gallium catalyst that can convert hydrogen and carbon dioxide into methanol, which has fewer byproducts than the production process. methanol uses normal catalysts.

An international team of researchers has found that a method to convert carbon dioxide to methanol is cheaper and cleaner than traditional methods. They are scientists from Stanford University, the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and the Danish University of Technology, which combine theory and experiment to identify a catalyst of nickel - gallium that can transfer hydrogen and carbon dioxide into methanol. The research results were published online in Nature Chemistry magazine on March 2, 2014.

'Methanol is synthesized in giant plants at very high pressures, using hydrogen gas, carbon dioxide and carbon dioxide from natural gas' , the study's lead author, Felix Studt, laboratory staff. SLAC test said. "We are looking for substances that can produce methanol from clean sources under low pressure conditions, which also emit low CO emissions."

The final goal of the study, the authors added, is to develop a carbon-neutral and carbon-neutral, large-scale production process that uses clean hydrogen.

'Imagine if we could synthesize methanol using hydrogen from renewable sources, such as hydrogen extracted from water by sunlight, and carbon dioxide emitted from projects. energy or chimneys of other industries " , co-author of the study, a professor of chemical engineering at Stanford said. " We may even want to create higher-grade wines, purses. like ethanol and propanol, which, unlike methanol, can be added directly to gasoline today. "

Industrial methanol

Worldwide, about 65 million tons of methanol is produced each year for use in the manufacture of paints, plastics, adhesives and other products. In a conventional methanol plant, natural gas and water are converted into 'synthesis gas' or 'syngas', which include CO, CO2 and H ₂ . The syngas are then converted into methanol in a high-pressure process using a catalyst made from copper, zinc and aluminum.

"We spent a lot of time researching and synthesizing industrial methanol ," Studt said. "It took us about three years to figure out how these processes took place and identify the sites of action on copper - zinc - aluminum catalysts that cause methanol fusion."

After Studt and his colleagues understood the molecular-level synthesis of methanol, they would start looking for a new catalyst capable of synthesizing methanol at low pressure using only hydrogen and carbon dioxide gas. . Instead of examining the active compounds in the laboratory, Studt studied potential catalysts in a huge digitized database that he and co-author of the study, Frank Abild - Pedersen , developed at SLAC lab.

"This technology is known as a computer-based design ," explains Nørskov, director of the SUNCAT Interface Science and Catalysis center at Stanford and SLAC. 'Scientists get new ideas about new functional materials based entirely on computer calculations. No laboratory or error has occurred in the laboratory before. We use our understanding and the enormous power of computers to identify interesting and new substances, then these substances will be tested by experiments. "

Studt compared Cu-Zn-Al catalysts with thousands of other substances in a huge database block. The most potential candidate appears to be a little-known compound called nickel - gallium.

'After we got the name of this compound from the computer, it was still very difficult to test it , ' said Nørskov. 'We don't do experiments here, so we need to have a good experimental partner.'

Nørskov reached out to a research team at the Danish Technical School led by author Ib Chorkendorff. First, the Danish team conducted a task of synthesizing nickel and gallium into a solid catalyst . Scientists then developed a series of experiments to see if the new catalyst could actually produce methanol at normal room air pressure.

Laboratory tests have confirmed that the results selected by the computer above are correct. At high temperatures, Ni - Ga produced much more methanol than the traditional Cu - Zn - Al catalyst, and produced significantly less byproducts of carbon monoxide.

'We want to produce methanol, not CO,' Chorkendorff said. 'We also want a stable and non-biodegradable catalyst. Laboratory-scale experiments have demonstrated that Ni-Ga is indeed such a compound, a very stable and durable solid. '

While these research results are indeed promising, a major difficulty of the research is still ahead.'We all want to make these catalysts a little cleaner , ' added Chorkendorff. 'If it contains only a few pure nickel nanoparticles, the output may be slightly reduced, since pure nickel is very bad in synthesizing methanol. The fact is that it creates all the chemical byproducts you don't want. '

Nickel is relatively abundant, although gallium is more expensive, but is now widely used in the electronics industry. This suggests that this new catalyst could be expanded to be applied on an industrial scale. However, the researchers also note that to make methanol synthesis really become a neutral carbon process, many other barriers need to be overcome.