Professor Jingjie Wu and his students used a carbon catalyst in a reactor to convert carbon dioxide into methane. This process, the Sabatier reaction, is used on the International Space Station to 'scrub' CO2 from the air its inhabitants breathe and generate rocket fuel to keep the station in stable orbit.
Wu, who began by studying fuel cells for electric vehicles, started looking at CO2 conversion in his lab 10 years ago.
“I realised that greenhouse gases were going to be a big issue in society,” he said. “A lot of countries realised that carbon dioxide is a big issue for the sustainable development of our society. That’s why I think we need to achieve carbon neutrality. [US decarbonisation targets] mean we’ll have to recycle carbon dioxide.”
Wu and his students experimented with catalysts such as graphene quantum dots (layers of carbon on the nanoscale) for increasing the yield of methane. He hopes the process could lead to start-ups commercialising...