In Oregon, methanol, important for the manufacture of many everyday goods and for its green energy potential, may soon be produced faster and more efficiently thanks to a collaboration that included two Oregon State University researchers.
Researchers helped characterize a novel electrocatalyst developed by collaborators at Yale University and helped explain the improved efficiency for deriving methanol from carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas that's largely responsible for global climate change. The findings of the study, funded by the National Science Foundation and the Yale Center for Natural Carbon Capture, were published today in Nature Nanotechnology.
The researchers' dual-site catalyst is the result of combining two different catalytic sites at adjacent locations, separated by about 2 nanometers, on carbon nanotubes and represents a significant improvement over previous single-site catalysts.
The new design increases the methanol production rate and results in a higher Faradaic efficiency of 50%, meaning less of the electricity used to catalyze the reaction is wasted. The previous single-site version operated at less than 30%.