Professor Jaeyoung Lee's research team develops catalyst to convert carbon dioxide into ethanol
□ Professor Jaeyoung Lee of the School of Earth Science and Environmental Engineering at the Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology (GIST, President Seung Hyeon Moon) has developed a copper oxide-silver catalyst for the conversion of carbon dioxide into high-value fuel ethanol.
□ CCS * technology for capturing and storing carbon dioxide emitted from industrial processes has been studied, but the stored carbon dioxide is not completely decomposed or removed. Recently, CCU ** (CO2 capture and recycling), a technology for recycling carbon dioxide as a resource, has received attention.
* Carbon Capture and Sequestration (CCS): captures carbon dioxide emitted from a power plants, steel mills, etc.
** Carbon Capture and Utilization (CCU): A technology that does not capture and store carbon dioxide but recycles it into high value-added materials. This is expected to overcome the problems and limitations of CCS.
∘ In the CCU technology, the most urgent problem to overcome when converting carbon dioxide into an organic compound through electrochemical conversion is to increase the Faraday efficiency *** and to increase the selectivity of the reaction so as to obtain the desired organic compound.
*** Faraday efficiency: The percentage of energy consumed in actual ethanol production.
□ The research team tried to electrochemically convert the carbon dioxide in the aqueous solution by using a simple electrochemical plating process **** to fabricate a silver oxide electrocatalyst containing silver on a nano-sized gas diffusion layer .
**** Electrochemical plating deposition method: A method of producing a uniform this film electrode by metal reduction (precipitation) reaction when electric energy of a conductive material is applied in an aqueous solution containing metal ions.
∘ Experimental results show that the oxidized copper-silver stripe electrode catalyst developed in this study showed Faraday efficiency of 34%, which is more than three times better than using a copper oxide electrode catalyst (10%).
□ Professor Jaeyoung Lee said, "If we can convert CO2 to 100% of ethanol, this can contribute to solving environmental problems as well as food and energy scarcity issues simultaneously. This can be achieved by recycling carbon dioxide as a fuel for future transportation, which I think it opens up new possibilities."