CO2 to ethanol

 by Ian Page

https://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/jacs.1c03940

To survive we need to turn CO2 into a valuable input to processes (other than enhanced oil extraction and fizzy drinks) rather than something to be just buried to leak later.

The more carbon atoms you can get to stick together the higher the value of the resulting products.

CO2 to ethanol/ethyl alcohol is one of the critical must do paths but has proved difficult.

This study shows that three catalysts, none of which is that good on their own, when put together at the atomic level in a particular way, produce impressive results. Zinc Oxide, copper, and cesium are all relatively available materials for this purpose.

The paper probably has more details of the efficiency and yield. At least I hope so!

Finding the catalysts and working out how it works involved some heavy cross disciplinary work and advanced tools, however it shows that binary and ternary ca (and perhaps higher) catalyst structures offer a massive field of possible new and valuable catalysts.



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