Fuel cells turn chemicals into electricity. Now, a U of T Engineering team has adapted technology from fuel cells to do the reverse: harness electricity to make valuable chemicals from waste carbon (CO2).
Fuel cells turn chemicals into electricity. Now, a U of T Engineering team has adapted technology from fuel cells to do the reverse: harness electricity to make valuable chemicals from waste carbon (CO2).
“For decades, talented researchers have been developing systems that convert electricity into hydrogen and back again,” says Professor Ted Sargent (ECE), one of the senior authors of a paper published today in Science. “Our innovation builds on that legacy, but by using carbon-based molecules, we can plug directly into existing hydrocarbon infrastructure.”
In a hydrogen fuel cell, hydrogen and oxygen come together on the surface of a catalyst. The chemical reaction releases electrons, which are captured by specialized materials within the fuel cell and pumped into a circuit.
The opposite of a fuel cell is an electolyzer, which uses electricity to drive a chemical reaction. The new paper’s authors are experts in designing electrolyzers that convert CO2 into other carbon-based molecules, such as ethylene. The team includes MIE PhD candidate Adnan Ozden, who is supervised by Professor David Sinton (MIE), as well as several members of Sargent’s team, including ECE PhD candidate Joshua Wicks, ECE postdoctoral fellow F. Pelayo García de Arquer and former ECE postdoctoral fellow Cao-Thang Dinh.
Read more at University of Toronto
Photo: In the improved electrolyzer, the reaction happens in a thin layer that combines a copper-based catalyst with Nafion, an ion-conducting polymer. The unique arrangement of these materials provides a reaction rate 10 times higher than previous designs. (CREDIT: Daria Perevezentsev)
