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Engineers at Rice University are directly converting carbon monoxide into acetic acid (a widely used chemical that gives vinegar a strong taste) through a continuous catalytic reactor, which can efficiently use renewable electricity to produce highly purified products .
The electrochemical process in the laboratory of chemical and biomolecular engineers at Rice University’s Brown School of Engineering has solved the problem of previous attempts to reduce carbon monoxide (CO) to acetic acid. These processes require additional steps to purify the product.
The environmentally friendly reactor uses nanometer cubic copper as the main catalyst and a unique solid electrolyte.
In 150 hours of continuous laboratory operation, the acetic acid content in the aqueous solution produced by this equipment was up to 2%. The purity of the acid component is as high as 98%, which is far better than the acid component produced by early attempts to catalytically convert carbon monoxide into liquid fuel.
Acetic acid is used as a preservative in medical applications along with vinegar and other foods. Used as a solvent for inks, paints and coatings; in the production of vinyl acetate, vinyl acetate is the precursor of ordinary white glue.
The Rice process is based on a reactor in Wang’s laboratory and produces formic acid from carbon dioxide (CO2). This research laid an important foundation for Wang (recently appointed Packard Fellow), who received a $2 million National Science Foundation (NSF) grant to continue to explore ways to convert greenhouse gases into liquid fuels.
Wang said: “We are upgrading our products from a one-carbon chemical substance formic acid to a two-carbon chemical substance, which is more challenging.” “People traditionally produce acetic acid in liquid electrolytes, but they still have poor performance and the products are The problem of electrolyte separation.”
Senftle added: “Of course, acetic acid is usually not synthesized from CO or CO2.” “This is the point: we are absorbing the waste gas we want to reduce and turning it into useful products.”
A careful coupling was carried out between the copper catalyst and the solid electrolyte, and the solid electrolyte was transferred from the formic acid reactor. Wang said: “Sometimes copper will produce chemicals along two different pathways.” “It can reduce carbon monoxide to acetic acid and alcohol. We designed a cube with a face that can control the carbon-carbon coupling, and the edges of the carbon-carbon The coupling leads to acetic acid rather than other products.”
Senftle and his team’s computational model helped refine the shape of the cube. He said: “We are able to show the type of edges on the cube, which are basically more corrugated surfaces. They help break certain CO keys, so that the product can be manipulated in one way or another.” More edge sites help break the right bond at the right time.”
Senftler said the project is a good demonstration of how theory and experiment should be connected. He said: “From the integration of components in the reactor to the atomic-level mechanism, this is a good example of many levels of engineering.” “It fits the theme of molecular nanotechnology and shows how we can extend it to real-world devices. ”
Wang said that the next step in the development of a scalable system is to improve the stability of the system and further reduce the energy required for the process.
Rice University graduate students Zhu Peng, Liu Chunyan and Xia Chuan, J. Evans Attwell-Welch, a postdoctoral researcher, is the main person in charge of the paper.
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