PFI-TT: Scalable Manufacturing of Novel Catalysts for Converting CO2 to Valuable Products

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Partnerships for Innovation - Technology Translation (PFI-TT) project is to develop a scalable manufacturing technology for catalysts and electrodes that are capable of converting carbon dioxide (CO2) into valuable products such as carbon monoxide (CO) via an electrochemical process. The annual anthropogenic emissions of CO2, the major greenhouse gas, are about 35 billion metric tons in recent years. To combat the climate change, it is critical to reduce CO2 emissions and preferably convert CO2 into valuable products to make the process more economically viable. The proposed technology aims to lower the overall cost of CO2 capture and conversion by developing a simple and inexpensive method to fabricate large quantities of catalysts that are critical to the electrochemical CO2 conversion. The proposed technology has the potential to create a multi-billion-dollar market of low-carbon products and chemicals by converting large amounts of CO2 captured from industry emissions and the atmosphere. The proposed project will use commercial carbon nanotubes (CNTs) as the feedstock to fabricate effective catalysts via a pyrolysis process and at a commercially viable scale. This is a more cost-effective approach than conventional methods using costly metals and carbon precursors for catalyst synthesis. The project will optimize the process parameters such as pyrolysis temperature, time, and gas flow rate to ensure a uniform catalyst property from large-scale manufacturing. This project will also provide understanding of the relationship between the composition of commercial CNTs and the catalytic performance of the synthesized catalyst. In addition, the team will fabricate a large-area electrode coated by a thin layer of the optimized catalyst and test its electrochemical CO2 conversion performance as well as long-term stability. These scalability investigations will pave the way for commercial applications of the new technology for CO2 conversion. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.