Increasing Butanol Conversion Rate by 70 Times to Use CO2 as Eco-Friendly Car Fuel...

Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology Professor Jaeyoung Lee's Team Achieves 70x Efficiency by Increasing Copper-Indium Catalyst Size 10x

[Asia Economy Reporter Kim Bong-su] Carbon dioxide, the main culprit of global warming, can be converted into eco-friendly butanol. The problem has been high costs and low efficiency, but a Korean research team has developed a technology that can convert it with 70 times higher efficiency than before.

The Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology (GIST) announced on the 12th that Professor Lee Jae-young's research team from the Department of Earth and Environmental Engineering developed a technology to efficiently produce eco-friendly butanol, which can be used as fuel for automobiles, through a carbon dioxide recycling process.

Until now, research has been conducted to reduce greenhouse gas carbon dioxide, the main cause of global warming, while securing high value-added organic compounds that could only be produced through petrochemical processes. The problem is that the conversion process to increase the number of carbons in carbon dioxide (CO2) to 2 or 3 has low reaction selectivity and efficiency, requiring additional separation and concentration processes at the downstream end of the process. Recently, there have been cases of producing butanol through electrochemical carbon dioxide conversion using copper catalysts. However, the Faradaic conversion efficiency for butanol was 0.056%, making it difficult to utilize.

The research team improved butanol production efficiency by 70 times compared to existing methods by controlling the carbon monoxide adsorbate (CO), the rate-determining step in the conversion of carbon dioxide to multi-carbon organic compounds, using an electrochemical catalyst made by introducing phosphorus (P) into copper (Cu) metal. This result was derived using an electrode catalyst with an area about 10 times larger than before.

Butanol can replace gasoline as a transportation energy source with high energy density, enabling high fuel efficiency. Butanol is not only a component of paints, inks, and adhesives but can also be used as a cleaner for semiconductors and precision machinery. It is also utilized in food, soap, and cosmetics.

Professor Lee Jae-young said, “We have been able to utilize carbon dioxide, known as a cause of global warming, as a high value-added eco-friendly resource,” adding, “We hope to mass-produce butanol, a future hydrogen energy, through scaling up electrode catalysts and improving processes, and use it in eco-friendly internal combustion engine vehicles.”

The research results were published online on the 11th in ‘ACS Energy Letters,’ a world-renowned journal in the field of chemical technology.

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