Amid increasingly urgent calls for more radical climate change action, a team of South Korean scientists has found a way to kill two birds with one stone by converting carbon dioxide into electricity and hydrogen.
The team, from the Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology, took as a starting point of their research the fact that when CO2 is absorbed into the sea—which is where most CO2 emissions end up—the acidity levels of the water rise. As per their
report, “If acidity increases, the number of protons increases, which in turn increases the power to attract electrons. If a battery system is created based on this phenomenon, electricity can be produced by removing CO2.”
The system that the researchers invented very much resembles a fuel cell in which the reaction starts when CO2 is injected into the water, which contains the catalyst necessary for the reaction and the sodium metal cathode. The team reports the system has a pretty high conversion efficiency at 50 percent and has operated for more than 1,000 hours without the electrodes sustaining any damage.
Ideally, the system could be deployed to capture and convert emissions from fossil fuel-powered facilities into hydrogen, to be used in its turn as vehicle fuel. However, this is early-stage research. According to the lead co-author of the research, Professor Jeongwon Kim, “This research will lead to more derived research and will be able to produce H2 and electricity more effectively when electrolytes, separator, system design, and electrocatalysts are improved.”
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https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-G...-Hydrogen.html
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