Catalyst converts carbon dioxide into fuel

Amin Salehi-Khojin, UIC professor of mechanical and industrial engineering, and colleagues are said to have developed a unique two-step catalytic process that uses molybdenum disulphide and an ionic liquid to reduce -  transfer electrons - to carbon dioxide in a chemical reaction. The new catalyst is claimed to improve efficiency and lower costs by replacing expensive metals such as gold or silver in the reduction reaction.

The study was published in the journal Nature Communications on July 30, 2014.

The discovery is a big step toward industrialisation, said Mohammad Asadi, UIC graduate student and co-first author on the paper.

‘With this catalyst, we can directly reduce carbon dioxide to syngas without the need for a secondary, expensive gasification process,’ he said in a statement.

In other chemical-reduction systems, the only reaction product is carbon monoxide. The new catalyst produces syngas, a mixture of carbon monoxide plus hydrogen.

The high density of loosely bound, energetic d-electrons in molybdenum disulphide facilitates charge transfer, driving the reduction of the carbon dioxide, said Salehi-Khojin, principal investigator on the study.