SMI aims to turn carbon dioxide into fuel

Scientists have already shown that microbes treating wastewater and CO₂ passed through molten carbonates can produce electricity.
Now a team at the Surrey Materials Institute (SMI) hopes to create new technology based on these ideas while reducing their energy usage.

Molten carbonate fuel cells (MCFCs) create a mixture of CO₂ and hydrogen that the Surrey team argues could be used to create hydrocarbon fuel if it can be produced at a lower, more cost-effective temperature.

This would effectively allow the waste CO₂ from existing power stations to be recycled back into fuel.

‘MCFCs operate at a very high temperature, but we think we can do it much lower,’ SMI’s Dr John Varcoe told The Engineer. ‘They may only generate a little electricity but, importantly, they won’t consume any.’

MCFCs are currently being developed by the UK’s Supergen consortium of businesses in the bioenergy sector, funded by the EPSRC.

They work by effectively passing carbon dioxide through a carbonate salt electrolyte at a temperature of around 650°C to create an electric current. The CO₂ then combines with the hydrogen that is also fed into the cell at the other side of the electrolyte.