Researchers have transformed CO2 (the greatest contributor to global warming) into methanol (AKA "wood alcohol"), a discovery that paves the way for creating new green fuels, they say.
They did this by simply shining sunlight on single atoms of copper deposited on light-activated nanocrystalline carbon nitride.
“Carbon dioxide valorization [assigning value] holds the key for achieving the net-zero ambition of the UK," said professor Andrei Khlobystov, School of Chemistry, University of Nottingham. "A big advantage of the new catalyst is that it consists of sustainable elements—carbon, nitrogen and copper—all highly abundant on our planet.”
The research was conducted by an international team of researchers from the University of Nottingham's School of Chemistry, University of Birmingham, University of Queensland and University of Ulm. It has been published in the Sustainable Energy & Fuels journal of the Royal Society of Chemistry
Citation: Tara M LeMercier, Madasamy Thangamuthu, Emerson C Kohlrausch, Yifan Chen, Craig Stoppiello, Michael W Fay, Graham A. Rance, Gazi N Aliev, Wolfgang Theis, Johannes Biskupek, Ute Kaiser, Anabel E. Lanterna, Jesum Alves Fernandes and Andrei Khlobystov. Synergy of Nanocrystalline Carbon Nitride with Cu Single Atom Catalyst Leads to Selective Photocatalytic Reduction of CO2 to Methanol. Sustainable Energy & Fuels. 10.1039/D4SE00028E (open access)
