Eureka! Carbon dioxide turns into ethanol

In a new twist to waste-to-fuel technology, scientists have developed a novel electrochemical process that uses low-cost materials to turn carbon dioxide into ethanol, a useful fuel.

“We discovered somewhat by accident that this material worked,” said lead author Adam Rondinone, from US Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

“We were trying to study the first step of a proposed reaction when we realised that the catalyst was doing the entire reaction on its own,” said Rondinone.

The team used a catalyst made of carbon, copper and nitrogen and applied voltage to trigger a complicated chemical reaction that essentially reverses the combustion process.

With the help of the nanotechnology-based catalyst which contains multiple reaction sites, the solution of carbon dioxide dissolved in water turned into ethanol with a yield of 63 per cent. Typically, this type of electrochemical reaction results in a mix of several different products in small amounts. “We are taking carbon dioxide, a waste product of combustion, and we are pushing that combustion reaction backwards with very high selectivity to a useful fuel,” Rondinone said. “Ethanol was a surprise — it is extremely difficult to go straight from carbon dioxide to ethanol with a single catalyst,” Rondinone added.