Researchers Develop New Material That Converts CO2 into Methanol Using Sunlight

Posted by EditorDavid on Saturday March 30, 2024 @01:34PM from the fun-with-photocatalysis dept.

“Researchers have successfully transformed CO2 into methanol,” reports SciTechDaily, “by shining sunlight on single atoms of copper deposited on a light-activated material, a discovery that paves the way for creating new green fuels.” Tara LeMercier, a PhD student who carried out the experimental work at the University of Nottingham, School of Chemistry, said: “We measured the current generated by light and used it as a criterion to judge the quality of the catalyst. Even without copper, the new form of carbon nitride is 44 times more active than traditional carbon nitride. However, to our surprise, the addition of only 1 mg of copper per 1 g of carbon nitride quadrupled this efficiency. Most importantly the selectivity changed from methane, another greenhouse gas, to methanol, a valuable green fuel.”

Professor Andrei Khlobystov, School of Chemistry, University of Nottingham, said: “Carbon dioxide valorization holds the key for achieving the net-zero ambition of the UK. It is vitally important to ensure the sustainability of our catalyst materials for this important reaction. A big advantage of the new catalyst is that it consists of sustainable elements — carbon, nitrogen, and copper — all highly abundant on our planet.” This invention represents a significant step towards a deep understanding of photocatalytic materials in CO2 conversion. It opens a pathway for creating highly selective and tuneable catalysts where the desired product could be dialed up by controlling the catalyst at the nanoscale.
“The research has been published in the Sustainable Energy & Fuels journal of the Royal Society of Chemistry.”

Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader Baron_Yam for sharing the article.

Those are the good news we want to read!

Ossia le belle notizie che che ci piace leggere. Ora manca solo una batteria che abbia una densità energetica pari o superiore a quella di benzina, gasolio e GPL, ossia 45-49KJ/kg (per la cronaca le batterie al litio siamo nell’ordine di 0,5-0,7 KJ/Kg ossia quasi cento volte meno)

Secondo la Corte di Cassazione gli automobilisti hanno diritto a un risarcimento completo per gli incidenti stradali, indipendentemente dal valore commerciale del veicolo

La Corte di Cassazione ha recentemente emesso una sentenza che estende ulteriormente i diritti degli automobilisti coinvolti in incidenti stradali. In particolare, ha stabilito che un’auto può essere riparata anche sei costisuperano il valore commerciale del veicolo, eliminando la precedente pratica delle compagnie assicurative di richiedere la rottamazione dell’auto in determinate circostanze.

Da Gazzetta.it – Incidenti auto, risarcimento anche se le riparazioni superano il valore residuo

Se la promessa verrà mantenuta beh, allora saremo davvero ad un punto di svolta: un aumento della densità di energia di ordine di grandezza è veramente un’innovazione necessaria per il successo dell’auto elettrica.

Certo stando a Densità energetica – https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Densit%C3%A0_energetica?wprov=sfla1 si passerebbe da 0,5-0,7 MJ/kg a 5-7 che è ancora piuttosto distante dai 47 circa della benzina … ma è sicuramente un’innovazione graditissima. Anche per tutte gli altri apparati che usano batterie al litio.

Scientists Discover Enzyme That Turns Air Into Electricity – Slashdot

Australian scientists have discovered an enzyme that converts air into energy. The finding, published in the journal Nature …..

the researchers extracted the enzyme responsible for using atmospheric hydrogen from a bacterium called Mycobacterium smegmatis. They showed that this enzyme, called Huc, turns hydrogen gas into an electrical current. Dr. Grinter notes, “Huc is extraordinarily efficient. Unlike all other known enzymes and chemical catalysts, it even consumes hydrogen below atmospheric levels — as little as 0.00005% of the air we breathe.”

https://www.wired.it/article/ambiente-simbiosi-pianura-padana-agricoltura-modello/?fbclid=IwAR1KzI1PcBBW8IGtVT95jSImJbBdaQwelv1H4EnHC62VjMfQCFad-wD8UuI

New photocatalyst made from an aerogel could enable more efficient hydrogen production.

Source: New aerogel could produce 70 times more hydrogen than other methods – Inceptive Mind

Extracting concentrated lithium from seawater will only cost five dollars of electricity per kilogram! And the output material covers the cost.

Source: We Can Now Harvest Usable Lithium From Seawater | IE