Scientists have found a new method to use solar energy in the fuel production
The material, which allows increasing the production efficiency of promising methanol fuel by more than 20 times, was developed by scientists from the National Research University of MIET (Moscow Institute of Electronic Technology) together with colleagues from Lodz Technical University (Poland). The results were published in Topics in Catalysis. The conversion of carbon dioxide into fuel (for example, methanol) is an effective way to reduce its toxic emissions into the atmosphere, the research authors believe. The optimal solution, in their opinion, is the use of renewable energy for this. Today, methanol synthesis from CO2 is mainly carried out by the photocatalytic method, where the reaction happens due to the light energy. However, titanium oxide, used as a photocatalyst, responds only to ultraviolet, which amounts to only 5% of sunlight. To fully utilize the solar energy, scientists modified the surface of titanium oxide with metal nanoparticles. It turned out that the combination of titanium oxide with some metals allows the catalyst to capture the energy of the visible part of the spectrum, covering most of the sunlight. - We showed that surface modification of TiO2 with metal particles increases the rate of methanol formation rate by 22 times. The most active particles were platinum and nickel. The development of this technology will make it possible to synthesize organic substances without the use of sophisticated equipment required in the classical synthesis method, Sergey Dubkov, senior scientist at the Institute for Advanced Materials and Technologies of NRU MIET, said. In the future, the team of scientists intends to develop a hybrid photocatalytic system adapted to work in the visible spectrum and capable of solving problems such as the synthesis of organic fuel and purification of water from organic contaminants, as well as the production of hydrogen or oxygen by the decomposition of water.
