离子液体催化剂显著提高人工光合作用效率

伤我心太深

伊利诺斯一研究组开发出一种离子液体催化剂和流式反应器，使人工光合作用能耗大大降低。这一技术有望实现商业化应用，减少人类对化石燃料的依赖和二氧化碳的排放。
　　





Biofuel production (left) compared to fuel produced via artificial synthesis. Crops takes in CO2, water and sunlight to create biomass, which then is transferred to a refinery to create fuel. In the artificial photosynthesis route, a solar collector or windmill collects energy that powers an electrolyzer, which converts CO2 to a synthesis gas that is piped to a refinery to create fuel. (Credit: Graphic by Dioxide Materials)

自然产生燃料VS人工合成燃料


伊利诺斯大学一研究组开发出一种催化剂，能显著提高人工光合作用的效率。

University of Illinois chemical and biological engineering professor Paul Kenis and his research group joined forces with researchers at Dioxide Materials, a startup company, to produce a catalyst that improves artificial photosynthesis. The company, in the university Research Park, was founded by retired chemical engineering professor Richard Masel. The team reported their results in the journal Science.

人工光合作用是利用人工方式将二氧化碳转变成有用的碳化合物（如燃料）。

Artificial photosynthesis is the process of converting carbon dioxide gas into useful carbon-based chemicals, most notably fuel or other compounds usually derived from petroleum, as an alternative to extracting them from biomass.

利用电化学元件可以实现人工光合作用

In plants, photosynthesis uses solar energy to convert carbon dioxide (CO2) and water to sugars and other hydrocarbons. Biofuels are refined from sugars extracted from crops such as corn. However, in artificial photosynthesis, an electrochemical cell uses energy from a solar collector or a wind turbine to convert CO2 to simple carbon fuels such as formic acid or methanol, which are further refined to make ethanol and other fuels.

这并不会影响粮食供应，而且电能传输也很方便

"The key advantage is that there is no competition with the food supply," said Masel, a co-principal investigator of the paper and CEO of Dioxide Materials, "and it is a lot cheaper to transmit electricity than it is to ship biomass to a refinery."

人工光合作用的第一步是将二氧化碳转变成一氧化碳。这个过程能耗很高，通常是得不偿失的。

However, one big hurdle has kept artificial photosynthesis from vaulting into the mainstream: The first step to making fuel, turning carbon dioxide into carbon monoxide, is too energy intensive. It requires so much electricity to drive this first reaction that more energy is used to produce the fuel than can be stored in the fuel.

伊利诺斯研究组开发了一种离子液体催化剂和流式反应器，使人工光合作用中第一步的能耗大大降低。

The Illinois group used a novel approach involving an ionic liquid to catalyze the reaction, greatly reducing the energy required to drive the process. The ionic liquids stabilize the intermediates in the reaction so that less electricity is needed to complete the conversion.

The researchers used an electrochemical cell as a flow reactor, separating the gaseous CO2 input and oxygen output from the liquid electrolyte catalyst with gas-diffusion electrodes. The cell design allowed the researchers to fine-tune the composition of the electrolyte stream to improve reaction kinetics, including adding ionic liquids as a co-catalyst.

"It lowers the overpotential for CO2 reduction tremendously," said Kenis, who is also a professor of mechanical science and engineering and affiliated with the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology. "Therefore, a much lower potential has to be applied. Applying a much lower potential corresponds to consuming less energy to drive the process."

研究组下一步将努力实现这项技术的商业化应用。

Next, the researchers hope to tackle the problem of throughput. To make their technology useful for commercial applications, they need to speed up the reaction and maximize conversion.

这项研究的意义包括：减少我们对化石燃料的依赖，减少二氧化碳的排放。

"More work is needed, but this research brings us a significant step closer to reducing our dependence on fossil fuels while simultaneously reducing CO2 emissions that are linked to unwanted climate change," Kenis said.

Graduate students Brian Rosen, Michael Thorson, Wei Zhu and Devin Whipple and postdoctoral researcher Amin Salehi-Khojin were co-authors of the paper. The U.S. Department of Energy supported this work.

Story Source:
The above story is reprinted (with editorial adaptations by ScienceDaily staff) from materials provided by University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
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Journal Reference:
1. B. A. Rosen, A. Salehi-Khojin, M. R. Thorson, W. Zhu, D. T. Whipple, P. J. A. Kenis, R. I. Masel. Ionic Liquid-Mediated Selective Conversion of CO2 to CO at Low Overpotentials. Science, 2011; DOI:10.1126/science.1209786